White Balance Temperature and Camera Profiles

[Manfred M]

Hi Manfred,

I am wondering what exactly you/we're seeing, or what you/we think you/we're seeing ...

When I alternately view the two images above (hosted on Flickr), in LyteBox, when I flick between them, my eyes instantly see a difference in the green-magenta axis, but the difference fades away after a second. This will be my eye adjusting to the new 'colour temperature' (the human eye is good at this), or it could also partly be the way the transition works in the LyteBox.

Agreed, Dave I know all about how quickly our eyes adapt, but I had them up side by side on the screen at the same time, so this was not the issue. In fact I had all four up at the same time and there is virtually no difference between the two different colour profiles, but only with the Flickr posts, so this definitely not an adaption issue.

[rudi]

Maybe a bit late to the party but, more about the Color Checker Pasport on the X-rite site:

f.ex.: "Raw Color Power-The Benefits of Custom Camera Profiles with the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport" by Joe Brady

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WWJz8-pgEA

[rudi]

... I routinely use a spectrally neutral card (I use a whiBal) for white balance, but I have never used a color checker to profile my cameras (currently a 5D III and a 7D). I wonder how much difference it makes. I understand that it is pearls before swine for web viewing, but I do print, and so I wonder whether I should bit the bullet and profile my cameras. Any thoughts?

There is a clear difference between my 7D and 5DIII. The difference between older cameras (like 40D-50D) and the 7D was even bigger.
Well, to me camera profiling is important (as monitor, printer.... calibration is....), but your mileage may vary.

[justjay]

I run with two profiles only, one with studio lights and one with outdoor lighting. Both give me near identical results. I've never found a need to do additional profiles.

White balance should not really play into this at all as the software analyses raw data (in *.dng format), and raw data has not WB data associated with it. What you are really doing is profiling sensor performance under different light sources; the wavelengths that sunlight produces are there, regardless of lighting conditions / time of day. If I were shooting under a different light source (LED or KinoFlow fluorescents) , I would run a profile of each of those as well.

I get it now. Sorry to revive old thread. The "thumbs up" feature does not work on my browser. Very helpful thread.