Today's lesson

As I learn, I like to go back to old pics that I’ve edited and make changes. I’d previously assumed that setting the white balance in the drone was good enough… how wrong I was. The only thing that’s changed between these two is the white balance and how I chose it. Original edit on the left…

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What was the drone setting and how did you achieve the one on the right?

Drone was whatever the weather was, probably cloudy. On the right I used the little custom loupe in white balance and chose the whitest thing in the photo. Note how the house is now actually white.

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It’s a method I’ve used in the past … but the usual problem is finding something that is genuinely white rather than just looks pretty white.
I use Lightroom and using the white sampler on something that you perceive is white sometimes doesn’t provide the desired result.

I do carry a set of standard white/grey/black cards (often use for still photography) and have tried using for drone pics with mixed results … mainly because where you’re flying from may be lit differently to where you’re taking pics of.

When I’m using and trying to get the colour balance right, take a pic of the grey card both before and after the flight … leave the colour balance the same all the way through the flight … then use the two pics to assess the average colour cast and apply correction for that average to pics/video taken during the flight.

More often than not I really can’t be faffed, though. :stuck_out_tongue:

And then, of course, when it’s sunset/sunrise, you don’t want things corrected (fully) … and leaving the drone on cloudy seems to provide the best average results for all conditions. LOL

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I’d thought of colour boards today as I’ll be building an editing pc or buying a laptop shortly.

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I use them quite often for stills - either setting my camera’s white balance or taking a pic of the grey / including in the corner of a pic to select in post … even when using Lightroom on the mobile.

Nice pic mate, slightly changing subject but where is that lock?

Culham in Oxfordshire

Oh right I’ve not been down that way but my dad has a boat round there somewhere, I live on a boat in South Yorkshire.

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That must present some great places to fly from.

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Yeah it will do for sure, but I’m not going anywhere near water until I get used to flying. I’ve got a large open field near me to practice on first.

Your first time over water is pretty scary. Still is actually.

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Olds cool.

I thought it was only me that still had an 18% grey card in the bag.

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Never far from my camera.

Find I use them indoors more than ever … it still amazes me that modern cameras still have “Tungsten” and “Fluorescent” white-balance settings. LEDs, Halogen, Hue, etc …. you can only get a correct colour setting, or edit, by using them.
Auto White balance is pretty good, but it can be easily misled, too.

I used to have custom setups for the different football grounds around the country dependdanr on the floodlight setups.

Some things just are not fixable in post.

As previous thread the current trend seems to be HDR the shit out of everything or filter files to within an inch of their lives.

I miss shooting Kodachrome when the skill was with the ‘tog, we used to be given a 12 exposure film at Uni and expected to get assessment results from it.