Cant figure this out for the life of me!

[kobelka]

Hey Jeff,
WB is proving to be something of a PITA for me. The Nikkor 85mm really seems to take fantastic pics. Everytime I try to custom set the WB with a white piece of plastic in the tank it doesnt work? I think I am following the instructions right. I can get it to work in other situations. Just have to keep messing with it I guess.
Oh ya, RAW is not likely for a beginner like me. Mabye someday but probably not!
Thanks

[Jeff000]

Originally Posted by kobelka

Hey Jeff,
WB is proving to be something of a PITA for me. The Nikkor 85mm really seems to take fantastic pics. Everytime I try to custom set the WB with a white piece of plastic in the tank it doesnt work? I think I am following the instructions right. I can get it to work in other situations. Just have to keep messing with it I guess.
Oh ya, RAW is not likely for a beginner like me. Mabye someday but probably not!
Thanks

Set the WB manually to 10000k (of the highest it can do) and then take a picture of that piece of plastic in the tank, and use that as a reference to change your WB in post production. Bonus points if you can put that piece of plastic into every shot so that you can change every shot individually.

Setting the WB off a grey card (or white) for a whole series of pictures is only useful with strobes, imo. It's not designed to compensate for light as blue as tanks have. So you have to get the rest of the way in post.

[Snaz]

RAW is the preferred method to shoot if you are doing post production like white balance on your computer. The problem with jpg files is they are a compressed file format and that can introduce artifacts especially when playing with them in post production program like Photoshop.

As a beginner though stick with the jpgs for now but be aware if photo editing software makes your pics look poor then consider shooting RAW.