lamiaceae wrote:
I shoot Raw! I'll often leave my camera set to AWB and if the light is known to me, to say Daylight, Cloudy, Shade, Flash, Fluorescent. But for Raw I don't really have to set it to anything special because I can change them to any WB I want with ACR with either one click or one slide. For mixed light for sure I'll leave to AWB because I'll have to work on the color balance in full photoshop anyway. But the WB with RAW does not matter, only the initial thumbnail that comes up shows how a JPG might have looked.
If you upgrade from a Nikon (DX) D300 to a Nikon (FX) D810, D750, D610, or Df, I am sure you will see an improvement but possibly no difference in color other than less noise. If you want to see a taste difference in WB like Kodachrome vs Ektachrome would would likely have to change to a different brand of camera, say Canon, Pentax, or Sony. I know from looking at my friends cameras that both Nikon and Canon images have a certain "look", that differs. And that is not to say that you can't make them indistinguishable with PP, just that the JPGs right out of the camera look rather different to me and different from my Pentax images. Again, RAWs are pretty independent from camera.
Nothing wrong with setting WB manually or using AWB, but you should not have any problem getting good WB if you use your camera to its optimum for the given light conditions. I find in complex or mixed color balanced light (more than one type of Kelvin) that AWB is a good place to start. But that is me with Pentax cameras.
I shoot Raw! I'll often leave my camera set to AW... (
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You can also adjust that "look" with Nikon Picture Controls. Again we are talking when you in-camera process to make a jpeg.
The provided Picture Controls can be adjusted by the user. Some (maybe all) Nikons also let you design your own custom Picture Controls.
Picture Controls adjust sharpening, brightness, contrast, hue and saturation.