White balance on D40

[UFreefer]

I'm having an issue with the white balance on D40. When I take measure the light by doing the index card trick, it says that it was not measureable and does not record the data. I have tried different white/grey items in different lighting and I get the same message 9 out of 10 times. What am I doing wrong?

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

Just shoot RAW. Problem solved. Go Gators.

 

[UFreefer]

Yeah I have been doing that but I just don't understand why it does that when not shooting RAW. Go Gators!

 

[TitusvileSurfer]

It is very difficult (virtually impossible) to get the white balance perfect the way you are doing it. It just isn't realistic. Your image is going to be a little blue or a little red and that is life. RAW lets you tweak the image over and over in a fraction of a second until it really is perfect. This is the digital age, you are using a digital camera, ditch the film technology. It is cool to know how to do that stuff just to say you can, but I don't know any professional photographers who actually do use it in real practice.

You may use a black, white, and grey card with the RAW to make finding the perfect settings even easier. That would make sense. Trying to set the white balance in camera just isn't practical. Think of all the shots you might miss while you spend 5 minutes trying to make sure the colors aren't weird.

 

[bmwardo]

I agree... just stay with RAW.
To answer your original question, or attempt, I found that when I had my D40x I would get the same message when I was focusing too closely to the grey card (just like every lens has a min focusing distance) so I would pull the card out a bit, or back away from it a bit and it would take the measurement fine. I can't remember for certain, but I think it only measures from the very center of the lens anyway, again not certain on that.

I got so fed up with the results of trying to manually set the white balance... The slider in Lightroom is just so easy