Viewing White Balance setting in Library mode

[jjlad]

Hi there,
I am trying out a new Pentax K-x and comparing it to my bridge cam .. Fuji s1''fs. I've been taking a series with one followed immediately by the same series with another and doing comparisons in LR.
The new cam seems to struggle horribly with white balance, but I notice when viewing the photos in the Library module, that the white balance setting is not visible in the Metadata panel Exif listings. To me, that seems to be an extremely important listing to be missing, particularly when free viewers like XNView and Irfanview display it.
I'm assuming therefore, that it must be there and that I'm just not setting it up right.
Is there any way I can make it show up?

Thanks in advance!
jj

 

[clee01l]

You will need something like EXIFtool to view the WB Settings, AFAIK, this is not a field that Adobe has chosen to reveal in the metadata panel. I can find none of the Metadata templates that show it.

As for the K-x, Set the camera on AWB and forget it. JPEGS SOOC look decent and it does not matter if you shoot RAW DNGs since this gets adjusted in LR. Also make sure that you have the import develop setting s set to "None" if you want to see the unadjusted WB out of the camera in LR.

 

[jjlad]

Thanks for the reply Cletus! By the way you have some great shots in your photostream.

For some reason the copy of the k-x I got (2nd one now) is struggling with WB. On auto in a hockey arena it was awful but setting for tungston corrected that, although I believe the lights in there are mercury or sodium vapor.

Whenever I took a high speed series ...4.5 fps or so ..every other frame is way off in WB. The aperture and shutter speed are the same but the colors really shift.

I'm disappointed to learn we can't filter for White Balance in LR 2.6.since freebie viewers have it. Now upon checking, I see it doesn't show up in CS3 either. Wow!

I'm also finding it impossible to filter for photos with or without develop setting changes ...and posted that question seperately.

Again thanks for your help. By the way ..your photos on flickr aren't keyworded with your camera information so I'm wondering what you are shooting all those nice avians with.

Cheers,
jj

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Just out of interest, what were you hoping to achieve by filtering by WB?

 

[Mark Sirota]

[quote author=jjlad link=topic=8881.msg5967'#msg5967' date=1263158491]
Whenever I took a high speed series ...4.5 fps or so ..every other frame is way off in WB. The aperture and shutter speed are the same but the colors really shift.[/quote]

That's because the lights are flickering. During their cycle, they don't just change brightness, they also change color. This is expected with this type of light source.

The only solution for it is to use a shutter speed that is an even multiple of the cycle frequency. If they flicker at 6' Hz, you need to use 1/6'th, 1/3'th, 1/15th, etc. Obviously this may be less than optimal for hockey...

 

[jjlad]

[quote author=Mark Sirota link=topic=8881.msg59858#msg59858 date=1263323647]
[quote author=jjlad link=topic=8881.msg5967'#msg5967' date=1263158491]
Whenever I took a high speed series ...4.5 fps or so ..every other frame is way off in WB. The aperture and shutter speed are the same but the colors really shift.[/quote]

That's because the lights are flickering. During their cycle, they don't just change brightness, they also change color. This is expected with this type of light source.

The only solution for it is to use a shutter speed that is an even multiple of the cycle frequency. If they flicker at 6' Hz, you need to use 1/6'th, 1/3'th, 1/15th, etc. Obviously this may be less than optimal for hockey...
[/quote]

Thanks Mark. I think I get what you are saying but the strange thing is that I was comparing the new cam to my existing one (slr to bridge cam so was expecting big things from the slr) and while I had that problem at the max 4.5fps rate on the slr, I didn't have it even a t 7fps on the bridge cam. I found the same thing shooting outdoors. The slr was changing wb between shots (blue sky/turquoise sky/blue sky/turquoise sky ...white snow/blue snow ...ski doo yellow/ski doo ORANGE...yikes!)...while the bridge cam was consistent...always just slightly blue but that made for easy mass correction. The fluctuating WB made it hard to choose shots to use and bothersome to process since you get so many photos when shooting high speed. Selecting auto WB or auto Tone didnt always get it right so it took further manual intervention and I just didn't expect or want that from a DSLR ...as I should be moving UP into one not suddenly having 'issues' to deal with.

I had done some experimenting with WB settings on both cameras and that's why I wanted filter for shots with different wb settings so I could see if there was fluxuation between them at the different settings. Not having that field available made that impossible.

At any rate ..I just couldn't get lit up about that particular slr and its kit lenses so I returned them and will continue with the bridge cam for now. I particlarly wanted the slr to get more control of DOF when shooting sports (eg. snow-x) I found I didn't get that much more with it ..probably due the the 55-3'' kit tele being 4.5 - 5.6. To get what I want I'll probably have to invest in some long 2.8 glass. Can't right now so will continue to 'create' DOF in CS3 ... on selected photos shot with the bridge cam.

Again ..thanks for the info on the frequency issue. If I run into that again I'll definately experiment with shutter speed to try and correct it.

jj