ML RAW picture style and white balance

[BAY6]

I believe I know the answer to this but I can't seem to find a definitive answer so here goes.  I just loaded the ML RAW firmware on my 5D Mark III and was wondering about white balance and picture style.  I understand that the signal is being pulled straight from the sensor and then copied onto the CF, but, does manual White Balance and Picture Style have anything at all to do with what is being recorded onto the CF card?  If not, then I understand all of the color correction needs to be done later in the "color correction" phase of working with the footage.

 

I read an article from someone that said when you are color correcting to just pick something that is white in the picture and use that for white balance.  What if there is nothing white in the screen?  When I hit record should I throw a white piece of paper in the shot very quickly to use for reference then pull it out?  How is everyone else handling this?

 

Are there any aspects of picture style (sharpening, contrast or saturation) that do get recorded into the RAW file?

 

Ok, thanks for the help.

 

Oh by the way, I did purchase your RAW shooting guide and read the whole thing without putting it down. Very good info.

 

Thanks.

[maxotics]

As far as I know, white balance is recorded, and can be used in post, but it not necessary because RAW is capturing each red, green and blue pixel data and saving it.  It is truly RAW, unpackaged, unadulterated.  All the picture style stuff is only used by the in-camera JPEG/H.265 processing.  In fact, that's the first thing one notices about RAW.  Not sharp and color bland. 

 

In post production you can pick which color is white and the software will adjust every other color in relation to that.  But most people go way beyond that!  

 

In fact, there are a lot of decisions you need to make before you can even start creating a watchable video from your RAW data.  

 

Hope this helps until someone more knowledgeable comes along :)

[BAY6]

With the  test's that I'm doing, I'm not showing that Picture Style or White Balance has anything to do with shooting RAW with ML.  They appear to not effect the RAW signal at all.  Can anyone else confirm this?

 

Thanks

[Damphousse]

With the  test's that I'm doing, I'm not showing that Picture Style or White Balance has anything to do with shooting RAW with ML.  They appear to not effect the RAW signal at all.  Can anyone else confirm this?

 

Thanks

 

I don't have a 5d MK III but every other canon I have used (tons of rebels and 50D) ignore white balance and picture style.  Well they don't ignore it there just isn't anywhere to stick that information.  Shoot some photographs (you remeber those) on your 5D MK III with raw+L Jpeg and then check them out in photoshop.  They won't look the same.  raw is literally the "raw" data with minimal processing off the sensor.  The JPEG is where white balance and picturestyle come into play.  On the 50D all my raw videos come out looking purplish!  How is that for white balance and picture style?  In programs like adobe Camera RAW you can just select either auto and let the computer guess or you can tell it what the lighting conditions were, ie sunny, shade, cloudy, tungsten, etc.  What I find useful is to learn what color temperatures corrolate to different lighting.  For example 5200K is a decent general sunny daylight color temperature.  Then tweak from there.  You can put a white card or something in your first frame and use the eye dropper to set color balance but you have to be sure not to over expose that white.

 

And really white balance is also an asthetic choice.  Even if you did use the white card method you may want a winter scene to be a bit blue to look "cooler" and if you are doing a crime drama in Miami you may want the white balance to be a bit "warmer" so everything can look orange.

[BAY6]

Okay, exactly as I thought.  I'm using Raw2Dng then bringing that into AfterEffects. It works great with lots of controls for grading. 

 

Thanks for the help.