Mi630 wrote:
Thanks. That actually makes sense to me. I was afraid someone would respond in a way that I would not be able to understand...all technical and such. Thanks for the response. I usually shoot in jpeg so always wondered what the difference was.
Strategy when using JPEG is different from using raw. In JPEG mode, you really need to match the color temperature of the light source (or mix) to the white balance setting on the camera.
Automatic White Balance is easily fooled by a large, brightly colored object. And the farther away from noon daylight is the light source color temperature, the greater the error you see in the results. The worst disparity is with low-wattage incandescents.
The presets (Daylight, Flash, Cloudy, Shade, Fluorescent, Incandescent...) are close. But for really good JPEGs, you need a reference target to set exposure AND CUSTOM (Nikon calls it Preset) WHITE BALANCE. If you mis-match your white balance setting in a JPEG, it is extremely hard to get a better white balance afterwards.
With raw capture, you can still use a reference target. The ColorChecker Passport is probably the most accurate if you're going for a duplication of reality. It has a Lightroom plug-in and a procedure that pops realistic color into your files. However, any standard exposure and white balance reference target will work with the eyedropper tool.
Also with raw capture, you can adjust white balance manually, with far less trouble than you would have with JPEGs.
Of course, it is difficult to impossible to get perfect results under sodium vapor, mercury vapor, some fluorescents, and some LED lamps. Those types of lights have "discontinuous spectra" — they emit light only at certain frequencies, not all visible frequencies. Only daylight and incandescent lights have truly continuous spectra. Daylight is heavily weighted towards blue, and incandescent toward red-amber...