Depends on your camera. D50 has a very good auto WB, a nice custom WB feature and a set of rather useless presets. So mine is either on auto or on custom.Don't wait for the Nikon D-whatever, have fun now!http://www.flickr.com/photos/j_wijnands/..

I use AWB on my 30D and XTi. Then I shoot RAW with picture preset set in NEUTRAL and use DPP for the best WB. It's a little time consuming for post processing but this is were I get the best result..

Have fun..

It depends on the camera. Some have very good AWB, others very bad. Most get foxed by mixed lighting and some struggle under tungsten, no matter what you do. They are improving, though..

Photographing at night also brings personal taste decisions into play. Do you correct the lights totally, making street lights seem like dim daylight or do you give them some warming up? If so, how much?.

It also depends on the sort of lighting used. Street lighting in the UK is far warmer than that used in the US for example, and settings that correct for one would not work in the other (the UK uses predominantly low-pressure sodium vapour lamps, where the US uses high-pressure sodium vapor, mercury vapor and other light sources). None of which sit comfortably on any standard white balance point..

I try to judge whether the artificial lights are floodlights or accents against a moonlit sky. If the former, I'll balance for them. If the latter, I'll go with a daylight balance. Anything in between and I'll set somewhere in between..

I think these two pages will help:.

Http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htmhttp://www.dcmag.co.uk/White_balance.YV6g-OVo39cnPg.htmlYou name it, I've broken it...

When I setup a shot I always use a custom white balance if Im going to use the JPEG from the camera. If Im going to work with RAW then I take a picture of my gray card first then take the real pics. In post processing I use the first pic of the graycard to determine the white balance adjustment, then apply that to the other pics..

When you ask for the WB for landscapes youre asking the wrong question. WB isnt based on the subject...its based on the light source. Different light sources, falling on a white sheet of paper, will give that paper different colorcasts. The purpose of white balance is to remove the colorcast and make the paper white again. Our eyes do this to some degree (not perfect) so we want our cameras to do it as well. In the days of film youd use filters on the lens.



So the white balance that you would use for the landscape depends heavily on the time of day. WB at noon is vastly different that what youd use at sunset...

1600GT wrote:.

I use AWB on my 30D and XTi. Then I shoot RAW with picture presetset in NEUTRAL and use DPP for the best WB. It's a little timeconsuming for post processing but this is were I get the bestresult..

Give Lightroom a try... it makes adjusting white balance a snap, for one or a thousand images. I shoot all raw, and after I load them into Lightroom, I adjust the white balance one image from a scene, then in one quick step can apply it to the others..

Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Friedl Kyoto, Japan http://regex.info/blog/..

Graystar wrote:.

So the white balance that you would use for the landscape dependsheavily on the time of day. WB at noon is vastly different thatwhat youd use at sunset..

Yes that's true. However, at noon, you would aim for a neutral colour rendition, where a grey card is rendered as a neutral grey. But in a sunset scene, you might want the card to appear rather warmer. It's not inconceivable to use the same WB for both shots. Though during most of the day you would probably want a more or less neutral result...

You can pretty much do the same thing in ACR in Photoshop..

I shoot all RAW also. I wouldnt' think of shooting JPEGs anymore.

Dave.

Give Lightroom a try... it makes adjusting white balance a snap,for one or a thousand images. I shoot all raw, and after I loadthem into Lightroom, I adjust the white balance one image from ascene, then in one quick step can apply it to the others..

Jeffrey.

Jeffrey Friedl Kyoto, Japan http://regex.info/blog/..