I don't think he's talking about the button not working properly. We're talking about the "Auto Tracking White" function being lame.

Well Dave I did try playing with the ATW and I think I did what you asked. In short, its true, this circuit sucks and there is no excuse for it from Sony.

Perhaps we should all email Juan Martinez en masse.

My experience was that in general it would adjust to daylight eventually OK. Sometimes it was faster than others and sometimes painfully slow. The fastest seemed to be when I white balanced under tungstun then walked into the daylight room. It seemed slower when walking back and forth between rooms, but I did not test that carefully.

Going from daylight to tungstun was considerably worse . It did always make some degree of adjustment but it only took me about halfway there and was still too warm, though not nearly as orange as when I would first walk in the room.

I had my shockless white turned to off BTW. I imagine since I had white walls that I would have been better off using the shockless white at 2 seconds or so and trying to have some white in the picture while hitting the white balance button as I changed rooms. Not avery elegant solution though. It truly sucked.

I haven't needed it yet but someday I'm sure I will.

Nice posts Tom Roper, I hope your tests continue. As for ATW, have been shooting and engineering for close to 30 years myself, as if that number means much. In my opinion it is just another tool in the bag. After analyzing temperature variations, there have been situations where I've used ATW across several applications. Painting many cameras in a live broadcast situation, shooting ENG and EFP, studio, SD and HD. I've received a few statues for my work and some seem to think that I'm good at what I do, but I don't really.

ATW is obviously not a first choice. When it first came out we had B+W viewfinders, no color LCDs. Shooters came back with unexpected results. The key to using ATW is to realize that it is neither accurate nor reliable. Sony realizes this. But, tungsten to daylight typically seems to produce roughly workable results. And if you only have a black and white viewfinder I would refrain. ATW is my last choice. But saying ATW is for amateurs is like saying you're an amateur if you use auto iris. Over several thousand jobs I have probably used ATW more than I have auto iris, after I know what I'm dealing with.

Normally, I balance a camera to a test chart with a scope and a remote control panel and store it in my silo of scene files. If I don't have a chart, I manual white balance rather than auto white balance. I haven't tested the EX1 ATW yet so can't comment. Just to say, until you know what is happening inside the camera and how to work with the technology's limitations, hesitate to knock it. ATW can be useful.

For Dave's walk-through job, I believe you can store 3 temps with EX1 using Preset, A and B and just flip through them as you hit different temperatures. Use Shockless white to ramp the change so in effect you will have 'manual ATW'.

Cheers

Thanks for the tip, Max. I guess I misunderstood how "Shockless" worked. I thought it only worked when using ATW. I didn't realize that it would affect the WB changes as you flipped the physical switch. I'll have to play with that tomorrow.

Serena's right. If your WB menu is set for preset, mem a, mem b, and atw assigned to an assignable button (say, instead of "lens info"), you can set your white balance on A for 5600 (by finding a source at that CT and setting WB). That gives you preset 3200, A at 5600, B for white balancing off a card, and ATW for tracking changes on the fly,( so long as you don't change the wb on your A setting.)

I'm not getting your result, Dave, but Full Auto Mode makes the atw transition even slower. In both manual and auto mode, the atw does change from tungsten to daylight and back again, but in full auto , the change takes twice as long. I'm also noticing that Tom's brightness variable comes into play. In manual mode, when changing from tungsten to daylight, the atw kicks in after 1-2 seconds, whereas when moving into tungsten from daylight, the change never takes less than 5 or 6 seconds. In full auto mode, however, those times are more than doubled, with atw kicking in on daylight after about 5 seconds and in tungsten after 10.

The shockless white setting at 0 vs. 3 makes the atw kick in marginally faster, but the atw speed is irrelevant as to when atw will kick in. It simply quickens the change once it does kick in. I could never get the tungsten balance to happen more quickly than 5 seconds, and as Bob says, this may be a function of the ex3 taking more into account, or...it just sucks.

The question remains as to the utility of atw. Is it better to have it on with the change coming in belatedly, or to simply shoot w/out it, leave one of the color temps incorrect, and then correct that one in post? I think it's better left to post, where you can dissolve the change in precisely. Or leave atw on, and just correct the first 2-10 seconds of each transition, tho I'm thinking that would be more difficult to do.

The zylight I was using to make observations with lets you shift the green/magenta balance independent of the color temperature. I was pointing it at a white wall. It was cloudy or rainy that day, and I thought I was doing the right thing gathering data under a controlled setting, but I was not actually moving the camera.

What I remember was that when the green level was boosted, the ATW was able to function in either direction, from daylight to tungsten AND from tungsten to daylight. If the green was reduced, it would go one way but not the other.

Bottom line as others have noted, in the practical sense ATW seems broken.

Tom--my test was done moving the camera back and forth from window to lamp-lit area. When the brightness level was below a certain threshhold (i.e, when the lamp was too far away from the area I was filming), the atw from day to tung wounldn't change, but once brought up to a certain level, atw would change in both directions, albeit with always the 5 second delay minimum.

Mike, if not broken at least not dependable.

Agreed. Time for a firmware update.

yes, with fw 1.13 (EX1) ATW solved, my friend has new firmware and befour (fw1.11 or lower) got slow reacting time ATW or dont reacting ATW for change light but now with 1.13 reacting time from daylight to tungsten light and back is 5s max... i contacted my service center for update, another think with this fw is more speed AF and booting camera.

The problem, Zenes, is that a 5-second delay is way too long to be of any practical use.

Then change ATW Speed to 1

atw speed is change speed between change white from 1 (slower) to 5 (faster)
i think, reaction of ATW affects shock white setting.. this setings now works very well, befour no

That does nothing to adjust the time it takes for atw to kick in, merely the ramping once it does kick in.

While I agree that with a $6K+ camera ATW should be better than a Best Buy-purchased camcorder...professionals should NOT be using this "feature"!

I always either white balance to Warm Cards (with my setup I'm just using the 100IRE White side of the card set most of the time) or set my color temperature with Preset. Indoors I am 3200K or 2000K and outdoors anywhere from 5600K on a cloudless day, 6300K overcast and 8000-9000K in the shade.

I use my still camera the same way. I NEVER use auto white balance because color correcting footage is a b*tch. I'd rather want 50 pictures or 5 minutes of footage that is a little off-white balance and is consistent than 5 minutes of footage that is off-white sometimes, perfectly white balanced another percentage off-white on the other side the other. Color correctors will agree with me whole-heartedly there!

Just like I never use auth-iris on the EX1! I wish there was a way to disable pretty much all auto features on the EX1 so that I don't accidentally bump a switch!

So...like others before have said, start using your camera the way it was meant to.

And? That's what the firmware fixes.

No, what's needed is to have menu settings be part of the picture profile.

David--I can't speak to the ex1 firmware fix, as I'm using an ex3, and while I have v1.03 firmware, my understanding is that 1.04 changed only the flicker reduce setting and didn't deal with atw. But based on what Zenes wrote...
...I don't think the ex1 has been fixed much either. 5 seconds was what I was getting on average for the day to tungstgen delay on the ex3, (sometimes 6 or 7 depending on brightness,) which is still unacceptably slow.

There are times when auto features can help, and walking from exterior to interior without having to stop shooting could be one of them. That it is a feature useable on some cameras , but not this one, is too bad. I don't mind using the servo to zoom with, and I wouldn't mind having this feature either.

EX1 has flicker reduce setting firmware update too as EX3, this fw is 1.12.. But i think 1.13 corrected speeded booting camera and working with ATW, no reply from sony service what 1.13 realy has new or bug corrected.

Then maybe there's a firmware coming for the ex3 that addresses atw?

Can Do
 

I set the WB PRESET button in PP settings to 5600, and then I set A to 3200, so it is instant indoor/outdoor with a flip of the switch just like on any broadcast camera. I think the B side uses ATW, which I never use unless I'm doing a run'n gun walking shot interior to exterior or vice versa.

I uploaded video how ATW works in fw1.13 between Tungsten light and lcd, befoure dont worked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wETixW2vg0k
or
http://www.vimeo.com/4951543

End of video shows how speed boot EX1 with 1.13, i think little speeded

"End of video shows how speed boot EX1 with 1.13, i think little speeded"

I think MUCH speeded. 5 secs instead of my 10 secs.

However 1.13 is unheard of here in Aus.

Cheers,

Vaughan

That looks like about the delay I'm getting with the ex3 (5 secs), so I'd say that the current firmware has already incorporated the change.