Do I need to set WB if I shot in RAW?

Do I need to manually set the white balance (e.g. with the help of a diving slate) even though I'm planning to only shoot in RAW?

Or is that yet another one of the bonuses with going RAW?

Nope, no need to manually balance

you dont have to WB in raw but if you want to cut down on your editting time go ahead and WB.

personally i would rather shoot more and not have to edit to much then only shoot a couple and spend days in PS to get it just right.

FWIW

Tooth

You'll get a better red channel if you do!

I only shoot RAW and I usually just set the camera WB to cloudy! seems to work best in most cases underwater. well for BLUE Pacific water that is!

then in the RAW converter I make some minor tweaks.

for the Humpback whale shots I try to actually concentrate on the whale itself and not the water color, as it was not blue in the first place! therefore that usually leads me to try to some higher temp settings.

Also, will be doing my first Caribbean dives in December, any suggestions as to settings for "Atlantic" Aquamarine water is more than welcome! Have no clue!

next couple of days I will be offline, back to Guam I go!

Chris

I am not an expert on this by any means, but you shouldn't need to set the WB underwater if you are shooting RAW. You control that in the converter. And setting WB underwater isn't easy (you must reset for each depth/change of light and the angle you hold your slate at will effect things) or an effective use of limited underwater time when your camera has the RAW capability IMHO.

I am not sure about having a better red channel?

I am finding that it doesn't take much time and it isn't like your RAW image comes out purple and unrealistic in the first place (usually ). A gentle tweak is often all that is needed and can reduce the tweaking you would normally do in PS. YMMV.

Kim:

You'll get a better red channel if you do!

Click to expand...

With a little further research I find that this might actually not be true. I originally thought that if you didn't capture the colour to start with then you had less to play with. Apparantly shooting in RAW format recordes EXACTLY what the camera CCD can detect. Therefore any white balance that the camera could do can, equally well (or much better), be done afterwards.

This leads me to a new conclusion that you do not need to set the white balance at all. (presuming you have the software to manipulate the image afterwards)

That's what I was thinking, but I am still not 100% sure on all the ins and outs of RAW...I just know it is, IMHO, silly to not use all the tools in your toolbox to get the best image possible

Kim:

You'll get a better red channel if you do!

Click to expand...

Completely not true - as you noted above.

If you're saving RAW files, the only thing you need to worry about is aperture and shutter speed- everything else can be adjusted later using a raw converter. White balance is a manipulation of data not optics. All images on all digicams start as "RAW" - but not all let you save this raw information. Raw is the unprocessed data of what the CCD captured. When shooting using JPEG, your camera uses its built-in "raw converter" and takes the settings you set in the camera, such as white balance, applies it to the captured DATA and produces a JPEG file. The 8 bit per pixel JPEG image that is saved has tons of information lost- especially color information. That's why you're very limited when trying to color correct in post. When shooting using RAW, you save ALL the data the CCD captures - This data is the same data the camera uses when it does it's own internal white balance adjustment while saving a JPEG.

Edited to add:
There are some reasons to still white balance though. Some RAW converters take the white balance setting information saved in the EXIF and automatically apply that during the conversion. From there your image can be tweaked, rather than starting from scratch.

Thanks for all replies.

So, we can all agree that when shooting RAW manually setting the white balance isn't needed, although you might want to do it in order to decrease the amount of time you have to put in during editing in the likes of Photo Shop.

Again, thanks for clarifying this for me.