Color balance adjustments

[Recty]

This is my time lapse video I posted about a week ago...

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If you'll watch it, please, you'll notice that it changes from bluish colors, which is pretty true to life, to orange/brownish, then slowly goes back to blue. It ruins the video, for me.

That color change is not done in post processing, it actually came out of the camera like that... I'm not sure what caused the camera to white balance differently, but it definitely did.

For what it's worth, the software I use is Sony Vegas Video (very new to it, dont know much) and Photoshop CS4.

So my question is, how do I fix this white balance problem? My only way I could think of to fix it is this...

Adjust the first picture how I want, write down the white balance and tint value. Do the same for the middle photograph in the time lapse and then end photograph. Or I suppose I could just do it for any sections that have problems...

So say for example I want the white balance set to -20 and the tint to +10. Then by frame 100, I need the white balance set to -10 and the tint to +30. What I would then do is open 10 frames at a time in CS4 in the open dialog window with all the sliders and basically move the white balance to -19 and the tint to +12 and synchronize all those 10 pictures, then save them out like that.

Then I'd go to the next 10 in the sequence, change the white balance to -18 and the tint +14... synch them all and move on to the next time, basically incrementally changing each section of pictures to eventually reach my desired levels of white balance and tint. This would slowly and smoothly keep the levels in line, rather than just halfway through the video set the levels to exactly what they need to be... which would be probably more distracting than it is right now.

Obviously, this is a huge huge pain. If I had a 2000 image timelapse I wanted to do, this would be a huge investment in time.

Is there any easy way to fix white balance issues like I'm wanting to, with the software I have? If there isnt, do I need to buy some other software that will do this? I'd really rather stick to CS4 and Vegas Video if at all possible.

 

[IPT]

That is strange. I have little expereince with this, but, when you open the shots in the softwre can you see the white balance shift objectively over the span of the shots (ie> the tint is 2 on frame 10, but 40 on frame 100)? If so, then you probably could do what you said bu just setting all the images to the same white balance and then use the batch process to apply it automatically. Of course if you can take the White balance off Auto when you shoot the problem should be a non-issue in the future.

 

[Recty]

I just landed in Florida and it's late but I'll reply about that in the next couple days.

 

[Recty]

That is strange. I have little expereince with this, but, when you open the shots in the softwre can you see the white balance shift objectively over the span of the shots (ie> the tint is 2 on frame 10, but 40 on frame 100)? If so, then you probably could do what you said bu just setting all the images to the same white balance and then use the batch process to apply it automatically. Of course if you can take the White balance off Auto when you shoot the problem should be a non-issue in the future.

I am not at home to check the files, but yes, they did shift over time. Now the weird thing is this was my first try at using JPG on my camera, I've alway shot RAW before. I couldnt find any way to totally turn off the white balance function of the camera, is there a way to do it? The best I could find was "custom" but that was still applying a white balance to everything which I didnt want it to do.

I'd like to just shoot in RAW next time, I've got a 32GB card so I should be able to take around 1700 pictures onto it, most of the time lapse stuff I've got planned shouldnt need that many pictures. However, it increases the workload quite a bit.

I'm still trying to understand why the white balance changed in the first place... I was way out in the boonies with no other light around and it just slowly adjusted to being very warm, then kicked back down to normal again.

Does temperature of the camera effect white balance somehow? My wife, who knows nothing about cameras but likes telling me stuff, thinks that as the camera got cooler it was messing with it and throwing off the white balance.... crazy as it sounds, I'm not coming up with any other bright ideas.