whitebalancing on the 550d

[Noa Put]

Hi all, I’m using a expodisc to whitebalance my camera's, works simple on my main videocamera but I’m not so sure I’m using it the right way on my dslr. (a Canon 550d)

What I did until now was to have the camera set in moviemode and whitebalance preset to auto, then I hold the expodisc to the lens and point it to the main light source and make a photo. Then I go through the menu to select to custom WB, choose my last photo I took and set that as reference for the whitebalance and as last I change the auto WB preset to manual.

Now I seen several tutorials online saying you need to put the camera in photomode (manual) first and whitebalance to auto before you take the picture and then switch to moviemode and follow the same instructions as above.

Is that really necessary? The way I do it now is quicker as I stay on moviemode all the time but I have had instances the camera would not whitebalance properly giving an error message and a heavily green image afterwards, any thoughts on this?

[John Vincent]

The white balancing nightmare is much more bothersome to me then rolling shutter or moire. Don't want rolling shutter? Don't move the camera so fast. Don't want moire? Have your actors wear solid prints.

Want to white balance all the time? Just pull all your hair out now and save yourself the time.

I end up just using the presets as a means to save my sanity. People praise the built in ND wheel on the AF100 (and rightfully so), but if the Mark III has a dedicated WB button, I might cry out of joy.

[Greg Fiske]

550d doesn't have presets without magic lantern as far as I can tell. I usually use movie mode. The problem might be that you forget to set wb to auto (when things turn green) and it tries to calibrate of the calibrated setting. I do this some times. I recommend magic lantern though, easier to use the presets.

I still need to run some test this weekend on white balance under tungsten light. I don't know which is better, to use the preset, which makes the image too saturated in post, or to do what you do which makes a neutral image (which I have no idea how saturated it is) and then add some warmth in post.

[Noa Put]

Thx for your answers, the 550d WB presets do give a too saturated images, even with the neutral color preset. I have done tests with tungsten and a neutral expodisc inside a room that had a light grey wall, with the tungsten and auto WB preset that wall had some pink in it and with the expodisc it was grey like it should be. I too see that the WB presets give to much saturation and I get much better natural looking colors using the expodisc.
Only thing bothering me is that last time i got an error message that the dslr was not able to give a correct WB with the expodisc even with the WB preset set to auto.