White balance of 14000k!?
 

Just about two days ago during a shoot, I get a white piece of paper in front of the lens, filling it, hit the white balance button, get the message "executing white balance", and the value comes back as 14000K. Is that even possible? The colors in the viewer finder definately looked off. I put it to Auto white, and a few moments later, its was looking normal. Today, I tried balancing on someone's white shirt outside on an overcast day, and got 8100K. These values seem way, way off! When I turned on Auto White, again, it came back much more normal, something like 5700 after a couple of moments.

Can anyone think of why that would happen? Is there a setting somewhere that would cause this behavior? It was working perfectly normal before a couple of days ago. Could there be a firmware update?

Overcast days or shade can easily measure at 10000K. I've never seen 14000K but it's certainly possible if the ambient light is blue enough.

At those settings the camera might make things look too red, but it's probably compensating correctly. It's just that we expect these kinds of scenes to have a slightly blueish look and not to be corrected to look like sunlight.

When you got these readings was the scene wildly reddish or just slightly more red than you would like?

I have noticed an inconsistency in the manual white balance. I end up rebalancing on the card in exactly the same light and position until I get something useful. It is definitely annoying. The only redeeming factor is being able to dial in your balance on a PP, either as a standalone value or as an offset to a manual white balance. The camera viewfinder always looks cooler than the LCD. My opinion is that the LCD is more accurate.

-Tony

My experience with other cameras tells me to use auto iris when using auto white balancing to get the most consistent results. If the exposure is not under the control of the camera the Iris setting can make the camera compensate for the balance incorrectly. Some cameras do take over the iris and some don't. I haven't tested the EX-1 enough to see if it switches to auto when white balancing. As for the some of the numbers You are getting the 14000 k number is a little high but the 8100k is very possible. Most shade starts around 6300 and goes much higher.

i workd with Panasonic DVCPRO 25 and 50 and they did the same.