Canon should be totally ashamed of this (and some others too) HP got this basic and absolutely essential thing right in their little digicam that's cheap even for a P&S, so why can't Canon?!! Yes, I know, there's more to the Canon 20D, but w

This makes no sense. If you can't tell when the image is correctly
white balanced by looking at it, then it doesn't matter what white
balance the camera selects, does it? The whole point of auto white
balance is to try to give something that looks good to the human
observer despite changing lighting conditions, but if the human observer
can't tell what's right, you can't expect the camera to do any better.

If you want white balance that's objectively correct, do a manual white
balance with a grey or white card, then shoot the card and check that
it's neutral in the final image.

If you don't want to do that, then do the final white balance yourself
using your eyes.

You can't expect any camera's auto white balance to do as well as a
human observer with reasonable vision. Auto white balance saves work,
and makes better use of the limited 8 bit resolution of JPEGs, but it
will never be as good as a human doing the adjustment. You seem to
expect it to be better.

Dave


I simply expect the Canon 20D's AWB to be at least as good as the little lowly
HP's AWB, if not even better, but as demonstrated to in the reviews, it clearly
isn't. As a result, with the little lowly HP, I can expect that in most cases
I'll look at the images and see a white balance that I won't disagree much
with, but with the Canon I can expect that many images in varying lighting
situations will need to be corrected, and that's too much unnecessary work.
Manual white balance is not the issue here.

Sabineellen wrote:


You can't expect any camera's auto white balance to do as well as a
human observer with reasonable vision. Auto white balance saves work,
and makes better use of the limited 8 bit resolution of JPEGs, but it
will never be as good as a human doing the adjustment. You seem to
expect it to be better.


I simply expect the Canon 20D's AWB to be at least as good as the little lowly
HP's AWB, if not even better, but as demonstrated to in the reviews, it clearly
isn't. As a result, with the little lowly HP, I can expect that in most cases
I'll look at the images and see a white balance that I won't disagree much
with, but with the Canon I can expect that many images in varying lighting
situations will need to be corrected, and that's too much unnecessary work.
Manual white balance is not the issue here.

What if the Review were wrong? I doubt it, but it could be. Therefor,
you should simply follow your advice to me, and that is to buy the 20D
and run your own tests.

Complaining about a point and shoot feature on a sophisticated camera
where that P+S feature allegedy sucks in one specific way -where most
photogs likely would set a specific white balance for those shots- still
rings of nit picking.

--
John McWilliams

Sabineellen wrote:


You can't expect any camera's auto white balance to do as well as a
human observer with reasonable vision. Auto white balance saves work,
and makes better use of the limited 8 bit resolution of JPEGs, but it
will never be as good as a human doing the adjustment. You seem to
expect it to be better.


I simply expect the Canon 20D's AWB to be at least as good as the little lowly
HP's AWB, if not even better, but as demonstrated to in the reviews, it clearly
isn't. As a result, with the little lowly HP, I can expect that in most cases
I'll look at the images and see a white balance that I won't disagree much
with, but with the Canon I can expect that many images in varying lighting
situations will need to be corrected, and that's too much unnecessary work.
Manual white balance is not the issue here.

What if the Review were wrong? I doubt it, but it could be. Therefor,
you should simply follow your advice to me, and that is to buy the 20D
and run your own tests.

Complaining about a point and shoot feature on a sophisticated camera
where that P+S feature allegedy sucks in one specific way -where most
photogs likely would set a specific white balance for those shots- still
rings of nit picking.

--
John McWilliams

Kibo informs me that (Sabineellen) stated that:

Nonsense. Just how do you think an autosetting works?

How is it nonsense?

It's trivial for the camera to correct for a preset WB, because it
merely requires a fixed adjustment to each colour channel. Figuring out
the temperature of the dominant light source in a given shot is quite
difficult, & can even be impossible in a scene with mixed lighting,
because it's possible that there *isn't* a dominant light source, & even
if the camera can detect multiple sources, it would have to be able to
read the user's mind to know which one to work from. (That said, the
highest temp light source in the shot is likely to be the best choice.)

I actually sat down with two cameras and tested them against each other, one
with a competent AWB, and the other with a poorly performing AWB; the one with
the poorly performing auto white balance got it a little better with its
incandescent preset than with its auto setting, but still, compared to the
other camera with the competent AWB, the preset was still quite poor, and
that's not surprising, as there's no univesral incandescent that a preset will
always meet. You may say it's tunable, and I'll say that doesn't change the
fact that the AUTO setting is poorly performing and the person would have to do
work with nearly every image to get it right.

Of course, you're assuming that the output of your HP on AWB /is/
correct - I wouldn't be greatly surprised if the results of AWB on your
HP would be completely unacceptable to someone like me. I often see
consumer digicam photos on websites that the owners think are fine, but
are clearly shot with the digital equivalent of daylight film.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

Kibo informs me that (Sabineellen) stated that:

Nonsense. Just how do you think an autosetting works?

How is it nonsense?

It's trivial for the camera to correct for a preset WB, because it
merely requires a fixed adjustment to each colour channel. Figuring out
the temperature of the dominant light source in a given shot is quite
difficult, & can even be impossible in a scene with mixed lighting,
because it's possible that there *isn't* a dominant light source, & even
if the camera can detect multiple sources, it would have to be able to
read the user's mind to know which one to work from. (That said, the
highest temp light source in the shot is likely to be the best choice.)

I actually sat down with two cameras and tested them against each other, one
with a competent AWB, and the other with a poorly performing AWB; the one with
the poorly performing auto white balance got it a little better with its
incandescent preset than with its auto setting, but still, compared to the
other camera with the competent AWB, the preset was still quite poor, and
that's not surprising, as there's no univesral incandescent that a preset will
always meet. You may say it's tunable, and I'll say that doesn't change the
fact that the AUTO setting is poorly performing and the person would have to do
work with nearly every image to get it right.

Of course, you're assuming that the output of your HP on AWB /is/
correct - I wouldn't be greatly surprised if the results of AWB on your
HP would be completely unacceptable to someone like me. I often see
consumer digicam photos on websites that the owners think are fine, but
are clearly shot with the digital equivalent of daylight film.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

Kibo informs me that (Sabineellen) stated that:

I personally think any situation that includes skintones (usually in artificial
lighting) is a critical situation. I have no problem with RAW output for
creative control, but I don't think this should be an excuse for poor AUTO or
default output performance. As for subjectivity, I totally agree, it becomes
entirely subjective, and that's why I think a camera should by default get it
as right as possible,

You've totally missed the point - how can the camera get something
subjective 'right' when there *is no* 'right' answer? I shoot photos
under mixed lighting regularly, & it's quite common for the resulting
shots to have as many as three different light sources (typically
incandescent, quartz-halogen & flash), each of which could be validly
chosen by the AWB. In this sort of situation, the 'correct' WB is
totally a matter of personal taste, & the camera would have to be able
to read your mind to get it 'right'.

BTW, if you were actually wanting good-looking photos, rather than an
opportunity to bitch about Canon, my advice would be to set the DSLR to
daylight (the sunburst icon on Canons) at all times, unless you're
shooting indoors at night under domestic incandescent lighting *without
flash*, in which case you should go for incandescent (lightbulb icon on
Canon) or manual WB @ 2000K.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

Kibo informs me that (Sabineellen) stated that:

I personally think any situation that includes skintones (usually in artificial
lighting) is a critical situation. I have no problem with RAW output for
creative control, but I don't think this should be an excuse for poor AUTO or
default output performance. As for subjectivity, I totally agree, it becomes
entirely subjective, and that's why I think a camera should by default get it
as right as possible,

You've totally missed the point - how can the camera get something
subjective 'right' when there *is no* 'right' answer? I shoot photos
under mixed lighting regularly, & it's quite common for the resulting
shots to have as many as three different light sources (typically
incandescent, quartz-halogen & flash), each of which could be validly
chosen by the AWB. In this sort of situation, the 'correct' WB is
totally a matter of personal taste, & the camera would have to be able
to read your mind to get it 'right'.

BTW, if you were actually wanting good-looking photos, rather than an
opportunity to bitch about Canon, my advice would be to set the DSLR to
daylight (the sunburst icon on Canons) at all times, unless you're
shooting indoors at night under domestic incandescent lighting *without
flash*, in which case you should go for incandescent (lightbulb icon on
Canon) or manual WB @ 2000K.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

Kibo informs me that (Sabineellen) stated that:

I personally think any situation that includes skintones (usually in artificial
lighting) is a critical situation. I have no problem with RAW output for
creative control, but I don't think this should be an excuse for poor AUTO or
default output performance. As for subjectivity, I totally agree, it becomes
entirely subjective, and that's why I think a camera should by default get it
as right as possible,

You've totally missed the point - how can the camera get something
subjective 'right' when there *is no* 'right' answer? I shoot photos
under mixed lighting regularly, & it's quite common for the resulting
shots to have as many as three different light sources (typically
incandescent, quartz-halogen & flash), each of which could be validly
chosen by the AWB. In this sort of situation, the 'correct' WB is
totally a matter of personal taste, & the camera would have to be able
to read your mind to get it 'right'.

BTW, if you were actually wanting good-looking photos, rather than an
opportunity to bitch about Canon, my advice would be to set the DSLR to
daylight (the sunburst icon on Canons) at all times, unless you're
shooting indoors at night under domestic incandescent lighting *without
flash*, in which case you should go for incandescent (lightbulb icon on
Canon) or manual WB @ 2000K.

--
W
. | ,. w , "Some people are alive only because
\|/ \|/ it is illegal to kill them." Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------

(Sabineellen) writes:

As a result, with the little lowly HP, I can expect that in most cases
I'll look at the images and see a white balance that I won't disagree much
with, but with the Canon I can expect that many images in varying lighting
situations will need to be corrected, and that's too much unnecessary work.

So you're saying that the HP makes a better point&shoot camera than the
much more expensive 20D, at least with respect to auto white balance.
That's your complaint, right?

It's not necessary to repeat it over and over again. You seem to expect
the 20D to be better at being a P&S camera than the HP (which is
designed as a P&S), while a variety of other people either don't expect
that or don't care. Nobody seems likely to change their mind.

Dave

"Dave Martindale" wrote in message
...
(Sabineellen) writes:

As a result, with the little lowly HP, I can expect that in most cases
I'll look at the images and see a white balance that I won't disagree much
with, but with the Canon I can expect that many images in varying lighting
situations will need to be corrected, and that's too much unnecessary
work.

So you're saying that the HP makes a better point&shoot camera than the
much more expensive 20D, at least with respect to auto white balance.
That's your complaint, right?

It's not necessary to repeat it over and over again. You seem to expect
the 20D to be better at being a P&S camera than the HP (which is
designed as a P&S), while a variety of other people either don't expect
that or don't care. Nobody seems likely to change their mind.

Dave

He only keeps up his trolling because people keep responding to him. I made
the mistake of contributing, but he likes these posts that try to show him
he is misguided. He is trolling, pure and simple and needs to be ignored.

DDDD