Why does a gray card/custom white balance remove the warm ambient color in my photos?
Asked 3/18/2014
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I’m using a Nikon D5200 and a ColorChecker Passport and want my photos to reflect the warm orange/golden ambient light I saw in a room. When I set a custom white balance using the ColorChecker’s gray card, the photos come out looking as if the light were neutral white instead of warm. Am I using the ColorChecker incorrectly? How should I shoot if I want to preserve the scene’s warm color rather than neutralize it?
Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
Photography Stack Exchange contributor
12y ago
2 Answers
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The color correction is acting as expected. The point of using a color target is to adjust for the color of light to assume that the light is white. If you want to have the color that is present when shooting, you should instead use a fixed white point that you consider to be standard white, but naturally people's eyes will adjust quite a bit for the color of light to make it appear to them as if it was plain white.
There is no such thing as "true color as your eye sees it" because your eye is different from others eye. You can manually adjust the color to match what you saw, but there is no automatic way to make it match exactly since it is a perceptual thing rather than the actual color of objects at that point.
Originally by user11392. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0
user11392
12y ago
0
Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.
You’re not doing anything wrong—the camera is. A gray card or ColorChecker used for custom white balance tells the camera to treat the light source as neutral white. That removes the warm cast by design.
So if you want to preserve the golden/orange ambient light, don’t set custom WB from the gray card for the final shot. Instead:
- shoot RAW
- use a fixed white balance (for example daylight/sunlight) rather than custom WB or AWB
- include the ColorChecker in a reference frame if you want a calibration reference for later editing
- adjust WB in post to match your memory or artistic intent
Important: there is no exact automatic way to capture “true colors as your eyes saw them.” Human vision constantly adapts to lighting, and perception varies from person to person. Cameras and profiles can only approximate color under a given illuminant.
In short: custom WB is for neutral, accurate reproduction of object colors under that light; fixed WB plus RAW is better when you want to keep the scene’s warm ambience.
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