Manual White Balance or Post Production???

[JS1221]

I've been watching a number of video lately about doing a manual white balance before shots. I've always shot just using the Auto White Balance (I shoot an Olympus TG-6 and E-M10 MarkIV).  I just started using Lightroom Classic last year and discovered I could adjust the white balance there and it really made a difference in many of my photos. Is a difference in Manual WB as opposed to adjusting the WB in post processing? Will one produce better results?

[Chris Ross]

8 hours ago, JS1221 said:

I've been watching a number of video lately about doing a manual white balance before shots. I've always shot just using the Auto White Balance (I shoot an Olympus TG-6 and E-M10 MarkIV).  I just started using Lightroom Classic last year and discovered I could adjust the white balance there and it really made a difference in many of my photos. Is a difference in Manual WB as opposed to adjusting the WB in post processing? Will one produce better results?

The RAW file is the same it's just closer to ideal if you get it right in camera as the IP program will generally use those settings as a preset to show a starting point.  Flash though is different to ambient light and far as I am aware the default for the camera is to assume flash light is 5500K which generally works reasonably well as long as flash light dominates.  It is generally better to do your processing in 16 bit as well as it is less likely to pixelate if the adjustments are more extreme.

 

Where manual WB makes a difference is in video it's kind of like getting it very close in camera as each frame is not like a raw frame for many cameras, it's more like a JPEG and the latitude for adjustment is limited compared to what you are used to in raw shooting.

[Guest]

If you shoot ambient light with no strobes it is recommended to set white balance in camera

This is because exposure meter works on jpeg and changing the white balance does in fact influence the exposure

 

When you use the strobes it no longer matters