White Balance with Warm Cards for the 7D?
 

I have my nifty set of warm and cool cards (thanks Vortex media) And just like you would imagine when using them with the JVC HD110 they worked just like you would expect, very well. But setting a custom white balance in the 7D is all together different and I'm getting some mixed results. Where does the white balance need to be set when I take the picture to use as reference for the warm balance? Auto white is inconsistent at best and I just cant seem to get the look I want with the cards. I'm sure I'm missing something, but what???

Any ideas???

Use the Kelvin setting to adjust the white balance. The LCD has good enough colors to set the WB, and it's fast. With different-colored sources, finding a compromise can be difficult, but with the 7D, the K setting gives the best results without too much strain.

The 7D will not have the same calorimetry as the you're previous camera, so I'd expect the warm-cards to produce different results. I prefer to do a traditional white balance on-set and fool with color in post where I have a LOT more control. Baking in a look on-set can be risky if you don't know exactly what you want.

On the other hand, if you do know what you want, "baking" will give the best possible result, since it works on the 14-bit side of the encoder. You will potentially get fewer contour artifacts, if you bake it in.

That said, you need to be REALLY precise with your exposure on the camera to get skin tones and other important elements in the sweet spot of the S-curve. If you bake in a look and expose wrong, you're doubly hosed. But if you nail the look and the exposure, it's potentially as good as shooting and grading RAW.

Of course, you need to know exactly what look you want in advance.

What are typical K settings to use in different conditions ? Indoors, outdoors, sunny, cloudy, etc ? I usually manually set white balance on something white, but that is not always possible. K setting sounds interesting.

There is no "typical" in lighting. Every source of light can change the game. Turn the K dial to higher numbers to make things go more blue, or toward lower numbers to go toward red. When the LCD looks like what you see with your eyes, you've got it right.

That said, a real, custom white balance is still the best way to go.

I was testing the custom white balance today because I plan on putting the camera in a underwater housing and I wanted to see if the custom WB could overcome a underwater
filter out of the water... I was pretty much amused at how well the custom WB worked
as the underwater filter is very red and goes between the camera body and the lens.

Under water I'd white balance with white sand, so today during testing I was using just about anything I could find that was white... a white shopping bag, white paper napkin
and just a white piece of paper worked very well during my testing....

This was my first time at Custom WB on a DLSR and I was surprised at how easy it is and
how well the results are..

I also worked with the K dial to see how that worked out... it got very close but the red
filter overtook it slightly...

For the reference shots I just used AWB... seemed to work fine for me...

BTW, there is a WB offset control in the 5D and 7D. On the 5D it's in the same menu as the WB selection, one item lower in the menu.

It's a two axis offset that lets you really customize the color. You could shoot a white or gray card and adjust more blue/amber and green/magenta. It even has bracketing for photographers. You can also select one of the preset WB or set the temperature and the WB color offset can still be applied.

Seconded.

Agreed. Also, I would not be surprised if the camera actually uses 16-bit int or 32-bit float math on the 14-bit data, given that Canon uses a pretty powerful 32-bit ARM processor.

Agreed.

Ray do you shoot underwater video or photo ? Just curious. UW video is a big hobby of mine. For now, I will stick with my camcorder for UW.

I shoot both, stills and video underwater... but I really like the footage from my Sony
PD-170 for underwater video.. that camera output is fantastic but its not HD, its SD.

I was looking at replacing it with a Sony EX1 but the Gates Housing is too much for me
to get...

So I'm looking to get a housing for the 7D... was going to get the housing for the 5DmKII
but I think the 7D is a better travel camera with the built in Flash for land use and such....

I was a bit worried about the WB being a hassle, but I played with it today and its pretty
easy... not as easy as the PD-170 but still not too hard to get the results I'm looking for.

I use the K dial and get it close and then fine tune it in post.

Geee, man... You had some really nice scuba shots! Great stuff!