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Focus for manual white balance?


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Hello!

 

I recently had a discussion about manual white balance and we did not came up with a right answer.

 

When performing a manual white balance on a camera, one holds a white board in front of the camera. The question is: Has the board to be in focus?

Of course it is rather difficult to focus on a totally white surface but there are scratches, borders, etc.

 

Please explain your answer briefly.

 

Thank you for your help,

Bernhard Walzl

Edited by Kapabel
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Most cameras will complain if it's overexposed - mine says "AWB NG OVER", for instance (or UNDER for the opposite circumstance).

 

Oddly, professional cameras tend to refer to manual white balance as AWB or "Automatic White Balance", because it's more automated than manually selecting RGB gain, gamma and pedestal... the sort of thing that domestic cameras call "auto white balance" is usually ATW or Automatic Tracking White.

 

Here endeth the Phil trivia lesson.

 

P

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  • 2 months later...

It shouldn't matter if the white sheet or board is in focus or not. Though I do have a video camera instruction manual that cautions that the white object in question may not be focussed when brought close to the lens during the setting of the white balance. Of course it's silly to say such a thing as this will have no impact on the white balance.

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