k5 white balance

davem
Posted 17/06/2015 - 10:11 Link
I was on a lake District photo workshop last week shooting a stream surrounded by trees in cloudy flat light conditions. The camera seemed to be picking up a lot of yellow/green in the scene and making photo very bright - not as seen. The workshop leader said the white balance was set wrong. He decided that a manual setting was needed, so he changed the setting. The colour did not alter much. His solution was that it could be altered in lightroom if I shot raw.

Is this the only solution? The camera was working well on other scenes. I shoot jpeg, don't understand lightroom and would rather get a shot right in camera as I hate sitting at the computer!

Dave
wvbarnes
Posted 17/06/2015 - 10:30 - Helpful Comment Link
Hi Dave,

There is a 'cloudy' white balance setting you can use.

If your white balance is on auto then perhaps your custom jpeg save settings need attention.

Press the right 'Custom Image' selector to the right of your OK button.
The default settings are the 'Bright' profile for K5 and K3. I prefer 'Natural'. All the settings have a little dot over the adjustment bars to set default. Saturation and High key (on my K3 at least) are the two you might want to change a notch.

I mostly save as jpeg unless awkward lighting conditions when I add a RAW save too. There is less tolerance but you can still sharpen, brighten, shadow lift, saturation alter etc in your photo program. I bet your image is adjustable. If you are way out the RAW image allows much more recovery.
Edited by wvbarnes: 17/06/2015 - 10:34
Algernon
Posted 17/06/2015 - 11:54 - Helpful Comment Link
Under green trees a K-5 will think it is 'Fluorescent'.

Usually better to adjust manually using a shot of some galvanized metal, scaffold tube etc.

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Algi
McGregNi
Posted 17/06/2015 - 12:53 Link
Don't forget that each WB preset (INCLUDING AWB) has its own fine tuning adjustment, on a 4 colour grid axis. Any adjustment is automatically saved and added to the preset starting point. For your situation it could be as simple as going into the AWB preset, pressing the right controller button and moving the yellow and green tones down (towards blue/magenta). You'll see the effect change on the image on the LCD screen as you move the parameters.
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MrB
Posted 17/06/2015 - 13:34 Link
Further to Nigel's post, if you want to alter the white balance for a particular scene, you could use one of the Kelvin settings (K1, K2 or K3). Take a test shot, then alter the Kelvin temperature until it looks close, then adjust the colour tone grid as Nigel has written. If Auto WB is left at its default settings, it is easy to get back from K to Auto WB, for a usable quick grab shot in different conditions.

Cheers.
Philip
Horst
Posted 17/06/2015 - 14:33 - Helpful Comment Link
The camera really only sees what is there. Quite often there is stray light and light from the sides which your brain discards, but the camera does not. You'll find if you stand near a green grassy field, you hed a slight green hue in to your image. What helps, is a decent lens hood. As long as possible,

Regards, Horst
mattox
Posted 17/06/2015 - 19:35 Link
White balance,....well in my opinion (and my needs obviously) why bother. Buy yourself Lightroom and shoot in raw and bother about it later when you can see the image on a large monitor and make changes much easier. For me white balance is a thing of the past on my camera (for me that is). Having said that my experience with the k5 is that is very spot on generally speaking. Any alterations that I make in Lightroom are because I want to alter the temperature from what was really there on the day
McGregNi
Posted 17/06/2015 - 21:21 Link
Ok, so its a thing of the past .... So what WB setting do you actually set on your camera? (you have to set something, that's no 'no' white balance). Even for RAW I believe there's great value in recording the colour temperature accurately at the scene, when you can actually compare it with what's in front of us.

The white balance fine tuning records a metadata value that software can act on, and the nearer you get colours to their correct tones in the image the better surely ... The less fiddling later the better I'd have thought .... ?
My Guides to the Pentax Digital Camera Flash Lighting System : Download here from the PentaxForums Homepage Article .... link
Pentax K7 with BG-4 Grip / Samyang 14mm f2.8 ED AS IF UMC / DA18-55mm f3.5-5.6 AL WR / SMC A28mm f2.8 / D FA 28-105mm / SMC F35-70 f3.5-4.5 / SMC A50mm f1.7 / Tamron AF70-300mm f4-5.6 Di LD macro / SMC M75-150mm f4.0 / Tamron Adaptall (CT-135) 135mm f2.8 / Asahi Takumar-A 2X tele-converter / Pentax AF-540FGZ (I & II) Flashes / Cactus RF60/X Flashes & V6/V6II Transceiver
Edited by McGregNi: 17/06/2015 - 21:22
redbusa99
Posted 17/06/2015 - 22:33 Link
must admit i to have found the K5 original and 11s very good when left in auto wb ,certainly in daylight hours with only a need to set a wb when shooting at night or creating a custom wb for something like IR
odd lens or 2

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davidstorm
Posted 17/06/2015 - 23:36 - Helpful Comment Link
I my experience the K-5 and K-5ii variants tend to over-emphasise yellows and greens in landscape images, an issue which seems to have been solved with the K-3, which to my eye renders more accurate tones on greens in landscapes.

You can buy quite cheaply grey neutral cards made of plastic to carry with you, these enable you to take a shot of the card in the lighting conditions prevalent at the time and use this to set the WB in your camera. I never bother with this as I always shoot RAW and adjust in Adobe Camera RAW, I find this much easier and more accurate, but if you're not confident or bothered about software processing the grey card is probably the best way.

Regards
David
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davem
Posted 18/06/2015 - 11:20 Link
Thanks for all your replies.
davidstorm wrote:
I my experience the K-5 and K-5ii variants tend to over-emphasise yellows and greens in landscape images, an issue which seems to have been solved with the K-3, which to my eye renders more accurate tones on greens in landscapes.

You can buy quite cheaply grey neutral cards made of plastic to carry with you, these enable you to take a shot of the card in the lighting conditions prevalent at the time and use this to set the WB in your camera. I never bother with this as I always shoot RAW and adjust in Adobe Camera RAW, I find this much easier and more accurate, but if you're not confident or bothered about software processing the grey card is probably the best way.

Regards
David
David I think that you have hit the nail on the head. I had set the white balance to cloudy a suggested by Bill.

In future I will try and get a reading on a more on a more neutral grey or carry card.

Sometimes I think that it all gets too complicated!!!

Dave

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