Wedding,Whitebalance,metering

so if a photographer shoots weddings, how often are they changing or at least monitoring where their white balance is?

Shoot aperture mode in RAW, and correct to the dress/tux in post processing.

lawson fhoto wrote: Shoot aperture mode in RAW, and correct to the dress/tux in post processing.

I don't like shooting raw. It's a pain.

Shooting a wedding in .jpg only?

lawson fhoto wrote: Shooting a wedding in .jpg only?

Ahh . . . not another JPEG/RAW debate. Isn't the post processing incredibly tedious for shooting in RAW?

No, not if you know what your doing, and raw will provide a superior file to work on, I shoot raw + jpeg, the jpegs become proofs after a batch resize makes them useless for prints but OK for on screen view, I then wait till the order before editing the raws.

Though it might be tedious, I think weddings are the one time every photographer should use RAW. The rates you charge for a wedding should be taking into account the post processing time. And a wedding is one of the most important days of a client's life, so the attention and diligence we use in photographing and post processing their photos from that day, IMHO, should be something we take very seriously as photographers. There are no do-overs for these precious photos, we have to get them right

rmeyer7 wrote: Though it might be tedious, I think weddings are the one time every photographer should use RAW. The rates you charge for a wedding should be taking into account the post processing time. And a wedding is one of the most important days of a client's life, so the attention and diligence we use in photographing and post processing their photos from that day, IMHO, should be something we take very seriously as photographers. There are no do-overs for these precious photos, we have to get them right

There are times raw is the only option and wedding is it.

Last time I shot in RAW, it looked so grainy. Probably user defect again?

Sounds like you need to simplify your post work a bit. Try Adobe Lightroom when using RAW.

It allows you to edit hundreds (or thousands) of images quickly.

HTH

eta These tutorials will get you running:

tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/

tennis man wrote: Last time I shot in RAW, it looked so grainy. Probably user defect again?

If it was grainy, you either had really high ISO or not using any noise reduction.

MLKstudios wrote: Sounds like you need to simplify your post work a bit. Try Adobe Lightroom when using RAW.

It allows you to edit hundreds (or thousands) of images quickly.

HTH

eta These tutorials will get you running:

tv.adobe.com/product/lightroom/

Thanks, but I don't like shooting raw, I find it to be a pain...no matter what software I PP with.

You can lead a horse to water...

Can you imagine if you get it wrong in camera and you shot in jpeg only, you would be so limited in what you could do, I woul;dnt want to be facing a client and telling them I screwed up and couldnt do anything about it.
As for processing raw being a pain it is actualy no different to processing a jpeg, you bring the pictures into your software and work on them, the difference is that in raw you can alter so much more if you want to, it gives you more options, to a photographer it is a bonus, it sounds to me like you are very inexperienced and scared of raw.
In photography we strive for the best for our clients or friends and family, that is because we care, Its not an argument about whats best jpeg or raw, there is no argument it is a plain fact that raw is best, it is the photographers best friend, his negative, what could be simpler than that.

Which is more tedious?

Setting a custom wb every time the lighting color changes: indoor, outdoor, different/mixed artificial lighting, flash or no flash, light reflecting off different colored walls, etc....

or

Adjust wb by eye on a calibrated monitor.

Personally I find constantly checking for custom wb on a busy wedding day much more tedious.

Out-of-camera processing can be automated just like in-camera processing. You could shoot raw, and batch process all your photos with the raw software that came with the camera. It should be able to duplicate the in-camera, jpeg processing (Canon's DPP will for sure). Then you could just adjust wb as needed.

Setting the camera to raw is going to turn off most (maybe not all) of the in-camera noise reduction, but I find the noise reduction tools available out-of-camera to be much nicer than the ones installed in cameras. When I'm pushing the limits of high ISO I definitely want a raw file to work with, not a jpeg that's already got in-camera NR and sharpening artifacts embedded.

If you absolutely don't want to shoot raw, then you have to live with the limitations of the in-camera processing. That means regularly adjusting wb, or living with what you get. We used to just accept it. Back the days of film I only carried daylight balanced film. I had some warming and cooling filters, but when shooting weddings I just lived with whatever color the light (and lab processing) gave me. In comparison raw processing seems like a wonderful dream.