White balance with a dSLR

[5ash (Philip)]

It's often recommended that you use auto white balance with a DSLR camera . I'm not sure how the camera deals with this when the image is dark and exposures so long. I was looking at the canon professional studio software and played with the WB controls so as to minimize the blue cast/sensitivity on DSO 's and found portrait increased the red and also higher temperature settings.
Would say a setting of 6000kelvin ( the temperature of the yellow- white surface of the sun ) work better as a setting than auto white balance?
Regards philip

[ZeroID (Brent)]

Hmmm, interesting question. I've just started playing around with WB settings in my DSLR to combat excessive LP causing red sky tones overall. But in RAW mode I suspect WB has no effect as it can be all managed through RGB levels during processing.
Haven't had a chance to experiment yet other than inside the camera controls but I'll be interested to see what the experts have to say on this.
An Astronomik CLS filter so far has proved the best solution to LP and good DSO colours as it also has some minor Ha response improvement apparently.

[rcheshire (Rowland)]

Set to daylight and take RAW. No effect unless selected in processing program. RAW is just a dsta file, as you know.