Auto White Balance is failing me!

WingsOfLovePhoto

Happy Monday Dgrinners! I moved to a new studio space in November and have been going crazy having to desaturate a blue hue that has is cast on all the whites in my photo's and is especially noticeable around dark hair on the white....I have always shot with auto white balance using the same lighting set up and never had this problem before. I originally thought it was being cast from a "tropical mural" that is on the wall behind me but I covered that with an approx 18% gray fabric. The rest of the room is a beige color and no blue anywhere. Any ideas what else might cause that? I am using a D3. I tried all the other WB settings and the closest that took away the blue was the flash setting but that is too red. Is there an easy way to custom WB the D3? I have attached a picture so you can see what I am talking about... Thanks for your input!

This is SOOC

adbsgicom

Get a grey card, take a shot and use that as your WB. You can have the camera apply it for the jpg, or, if you shoot raw, set the WB for the grey card shot, and then apply that temp to everything else. If you run LR it is very simple.

Scott_Quier

I would say that you were lucky in your previous location that AWB worked so well for you. That is, indeed, a rare thing.

As Andrew has indicated, you need to use a tool that will allow you to reliably set the WB, either by creating a custom WB (CWB) in-camera or in your post-processing software.

There are lots of tools available for this. Two of my favorite are the WhiBal Card and something like this "exposure target".

Each camera is different, but the basic process to set a CWB is to take a shot of your gray target under the lighting conditions you will be using for your shoot, filling the frame as best you can. Then, go into the camera menus and select that frame as the "neutral" reference.

The other (and usually faster) choice is to take a shot of the gray target (again under the lighting conditions to be used for the shoot) and use that as your neutral in post-processing. Most (all) photo editing software has a tool (a color picker) that will allow you to select a known neutral and use that color as the basis for seting the WB in the image. This is usually faster as you don't have to set the CWB in camera each time you change the lights. Oh, and this process also allows one to take a shot at the start and at the end of a session - good because sometimes the light color changes as the lights get warmer.

Qarik

of course you can custom set the WB on a D3. read the manual!

Also just to check ..you are shooting RAW correct? simple as pie to warm it up some?