W/B question

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ewick

Senior Member
I shoot raw and use a ring flash 90% of the time. I always set my W/B to flash and on my old D90 it would always open up at 5500K but now on my D7100 it opens up (ACR then CS5) at 6300k which is way warmer than I like. Any thoughts or opinions on this?
 
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WayneF

Senior Member
ewick said:
I shoot raw and use a ring flash 90% of the time. I always set my W/B to flash and on my old D90 it would always open up at 5500K but now on my D7100 it opens up (ACR then CS5) at 6300k which is way warmer than I like. Any thoughts or opinions on this?
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My notion is that if you want Flash WB, then you specifically need to set Flash in Adobe Camera Raw. Thats the purpose of Raw.

If you leave it "as opened" at Adobe "As Shot" WB (i.e., if you don't bother to do anything), Adobe tries to interpret WB from the Camera Exif, but color temperature is NOT in the Exif. WB is in there, but it is Nikon encoded. Nikon changed the Exif encoding recently. Adobe takes a crack at, but it won't come out exactly 5500K... unless you specifically specify Flash in ACR. I am not knocking Adobe at all, Nikon sort of considers their stuff proprietary, theirs, not ours.

The flash color of any flash varies with power and flash tube and such, and it really won't be 5500K anyway. The real beauty of Raw is that we can see it first, and then better KNOW what it needs, instead of just a vague guess.

See White Balance Correction, with or without Raw

Specifically see down the page halfway, to the several pictures of the white tea cup with the yellow flower on it. That has to be one heck of a hint. :) Hope it helps.
 
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