My WB is never right but my settings are right! What can I do?

Are you like me? Your white balance is never quite right even though your settings are correct? When you use Kelvin, a gray card or ExpoDisc there is still a cast on your images – even if you shoot in a pure white room? Well, you should read this!

Like many photographers, I set my white balance with Kelvin yet there is always a magenta cast on ALL of my pictures. I have always corrected white balance issues in post processing. However, after reading Meg Loeks’s Click Photo School Breakout, I noticed the white balance in her RAW images was spot on. I wondered what I was doing wrong. In fact, nothing!

I looked at my camera menu and found a place where I can change my camera’s white-balance manufacturer settings. After doing a few small experiments, I found the sweet spot for my camera and it has changed my life and saved me a ton of time! No longer do I have to deal with that pesky magenta tint in all my photos. Here’s how you can do it, too.

1. Find the WB Shift/Bkt menu.

On the Canon 6D, it is on the main screen.

2. Take some test images.

To find your camera’s sweet spot, you will have to do some experimenting. In my case, my cast was very magenta, so I thought it was a good idea to raise the greens. I also tried raising the green and adding some red, and then took some more test images just to see.

My test images are below:

TEST A:

manufacturer’s
settings

TEST B:

green +2

TEST C:

green +2, red +2

TEST D:

red +2

TEST E:

green +2, red +1

In the close-up shots you can see the following results:

• Test A: his skin is magenta
• Test B: a bit too green
• Test C: too green
• Test D: too red
• Test E: looks great!

I decided to analyze the differences in Lightroom and discovered that the Kelvin number is not the same as the one I dialed into the camera! I shot all of them at 5200K but each image did not have this figure:

• Test A: temp 5450, tint 8
• Test B: temp 5150, tint -3
• Test C: temp 5400, tint -2
• Test D: temp 5150, tint 7
• Test E: temp 5250, tint 3

So it seems that the camera reevaluated the white balance according to the in-camera settings. Tests B and E are the closest to my original settings so I think they are not too far from a good white balance.

3. Use the eyedropper tool to evaluate the white balance “spot-on-titude”.

I used the eyedropper to sample the same place on all five images. Here are the new settings I needed to have a correct white balance:

• Test A: temp 4750, tint 3
• Test B: temp 4850, tint 2
• Test C: temp 4850, tint 4
• Test D: temp 4750, tint 3
• Test E: temp 4750, tint 3

When I compared my in-camera settings with the white balance eyedropper, it was now clear that Tests A and D were too magenta; tests B and C were too green, and test E was almost spot on. I just messed with the Kelvin, not the tint!

I now know that I should stick with Green +2 and Red + 1 to get good skintones.

Good to know

• Using the in-camera white balance settings is not a tool to set your white balance. This is only to correct a cast produced by the white balance manufacturer settings of your camera.
• You still need to set your white balance using your preferred method (Kelvin, gray card, ExpoDisc, automatic white balance mode, etc.).
• This method will not remove every potential color cast you could have. In my picture above, I had a yellow cast because of the light yellow painted walls in the room. I had to correct it during post processing.

This is only to fix your manufacturer-settings. And if you do it correctly, you will save a ton of time!

Give it a try!