ExpoDisc 3, White Balance filter for Infrared

Do you struggle with white balance in infrared photography? In this video, we explore the ExpoDisc 3, a white balance filter, and its effectiveness for infrared shooting. We’ll compare results using raw, JPEG, and video formats with various infrared filters, including 550nm, 590nm, 720nm, and IR Chrome. Discover how the ExpoDisc 3 performs in challenging white balance situations and learn when it’s most beneficial for infrared photography and videography.

Infrared Profile Pack

Lightroom Infrared Color Swap Profiles

PRO Infrared LUTs

Comments

If you have comments, questions or feedback, use the comment section for this video.

---

Transcript for White Balance Filter for Infrared? Raw vs JPEG, IR Video, ExpoDisc 3. Duration: 15:40.

• 0:00 Do you have challenging white balancing situations when shooting in infrared? I was wondering if an accessory for white balance could help improve your white balance when shooting infrared photography or video. This is the ExpoDisc 3. It can be used to help set a custom white balance in camera.
• 0:20 I was wondering if this would be useful for setting a custom white balance when shooting infrared photography or infrared video. I reached out to ExpoDisc and they provided me with a copy of the ExpoDisc 3. This video is not sponsored and my opinions are my own. Let's take a look at how the ExpoDisc is used
• 0:39 and then we'll compare when shooting in RAW, shooting in JPEG, and shooting video with various infrared filters. So this is a camera converted to a 590 nanometer internal infrared filter and this is what the viewfinder would look like if I have the white balance set to daylight. This version of the ExpoDisc has a 77
• 1:01 millimeter filter thread and this particular lens has a 58 millimeter filter thread. So what I'm going to do is attach some step-up rings so that I can convert between the two
• 1:16 And now I can attach the ExpoDisc to the front of the lens.
• 1:28 Now that I have the ExpoDisc attached, I can go into the menus and set a custom white balance. Of course the procedure will vary slightly depending on your camera. In this case I'm going to go to Custom 1 and then I will hit my shutter button to set a custom white balance. It's completed and then I will hit OK to accept.
• 1:48 Now that I've set a custom white balance, I can simply remove the ExpoDisc from the front of the lens.
• 1:55 And now that I've removed the ExpoDisc, this is what my preview will look like on my external viewfinder. Once you've set a custom white balance, you can shoot normally. Be aware that if the lighting conditions change dramatically or if you change your infrared filter then you should set a new custom
• 2:11 white balance with the ExpoDisc to make sure that you get consistent results. Now that we've covered the basic usage, let's shoot some test shots with various infrared filters so we can compare the results. [music] I finished shooting the test shots using the ExpoDisc 3 to set a custom white balance with
• 2:35 the 550, 590 and 720 nanometer infrared filter as well as the IR Chrome filter. Let's head back into the office and take a look at the images. [music] So remember with an infrared high pass filter, no camera is going to be able to set a perfect white balance so we don't expect a perfect white balance even with the ExpoDisc 3.
• 3:00 The question becomes, can it help us? What's the difference between RAW and JPEG? Alright, so let's take a look. First we have a RAW image. This was shot with a 550 nanometer filter. So this is what it looks like out of camera with the custom white balance set. We will set a white balance using our picker.
• 3:19 That gets us a little closer, that's not bad. So let's see what we can do if we select a custom profile. So I'll use Infrared Temp -100, that is from the Infrared Profile Pack. Now we will use the picker, select the clouds to set a good white balance and that's pretty good. We've got value that's within our range and everything looks great here.
• 3:39 So this is the RAW image. Let's go over to the JPEG image. So this is the JPEG image. This is the white balance before we're making any changes. If I grab the picker and then select the white balance, you can see that we've gotten pretty good white balance with the clouds, the colors look pretty good.
• 3:57 And so we are able to set a white balance without a custom profile in JPEG. What's the difference between these two images? So if I hit compare and pull these up side by side, we have the RAW image on the left and the JPEG image on the right. A couple things you'll notice, first of all,
• 4:15 the colors are a little more subdued in the RAW image, they're a little more saturated in the JPEG image. This is because the RAW image can capture colors with a greater color space. So in this case Adobe RGB has more colors available to it. The JPEG is going to save your image in the sRGB color space.
• 4:37 There are less colors available, so you'll lose a little bit of subtlety in the color. So be aware of that if you want to shoot JPEG, you're going to make a little bit of a compromise on colors. The other thing that you'll notice is some of the edges between, in this case, the clouds
• 4:52 and the sky is a little better with the RAW image. Let me zoom in to about 100% and you can see the difference here. Here on the left is the RAW image, you see a pretty nice boundary between the clouds and the sky, but over here on the right you can see there's a little bit of color fringing that happens.
• 5:10 And so this is again another artifact that's going to be the result of the JPEG process and less colors. All right, let's swap these colors. So I'll go back to the RAW image and I'm going to go over to the Profile Browser and I'm going to select one of the Lightroom Infrared Color Swap Profiles.
• 5:29 In this case, I'm going to select Swap. It's the straight red, blue channel mixer color swap. And so this is the result we get with the RAW image. Now if we go over to JPEG, I'll do the same thing with the JPEG image. We'll select the JPEG version of that. The JPEG version is the same, but it doesn't
• 5:47 have any white balance temperature adjustment. So we've set the swap and now we've got the two color swaps. So let's compare these again. So on the left is the RAW image and on the right is the JPEG image. And so you can still see the colors might appear a little bit closer after a color swap.
• 6:05 There's maybe a little bit more color saturation in the JPEG on the right, a little more subtle, although with a 550 nanometer orange filter, there's rarely anything subtle about the colors, but a little slightly more subdued colors on the left here in the RAW. With the clouds, you can see the fringing that's happening.
• 6:24 So let's zoom in a little bit on the clouds and you can see on the left is the RAW and on the right is the JPEG. Let's move on to a 590 nanometer filter. So this is the RAW image. If I try to set a white balance just as is without a profile, there's limits to what I can get with the white balance.
• 6:45 So I will select a custom profile, the Infrared Temp -100, then set a white balance. And now this is what the image looks like. I've got these soft baby blues in the foliage and a dark golden sky. Let's try the JPEG and see what this looks like. This is out of camera. And if I click to set a white balance here with the picker,
• 7:05 then you can see I've got a good white balance in the clouds. The colors are a little punchier. The sky color is a little more saturated. The foliage is a little bit more saturated, but I didn't need to use a custom profile to get here. So let's compare these two images. On the left, we have the RAW image with the more subdued colors.
• 7:24 And on the right, we have the JPEG image with the slightly stronger colors. Similar issues with the fringing of the clouds. So that's something to be aware of. Let's do a quick color swap for the 590. So for Infrared Temp -100, we will use a -100 Swap. And then for the JPEG image, we will do the same thing.
• 7:45 We'll go to the JPEG Swap. And now I can compare these two images side by side. Left is the RAW. Right is the JPEG. Slightly more subdued colors. The broader color space gives us nicer colors in the RAW image. And then on the right hand side in the JPEG, looks pretty good. But seeing a little bit of that fringing around the clouds.
• 8:06 Okay, now let's look at a 720 nanometer filter. This is the RAW version. If I try to set a white balance, then this actually looks pretty good. Not too bad. But let me set a profile anyway. In this case, I'll use Infrared Temp -50, which is what I commonly use when I'm shooting 720.
• 8:23 I'll now set a white balance again. And this is the result that we get with the RAW image. If we switch over to the JPEG, this is out of camera. And if I white balance with the picker, just a very slight adjustment over here. If we look over here at the white balance settings, this was a very slight adjustment that I made by setting this.
• 8:42 So actually in camera, wasn't too bad in terms of the white balance that was set. All right, let's swap these two and see what they look like with color swap. So I'll go down to the negative 50 group and grab my swap. And then that's the RAW image. And now for the JPEG, we'll go down to the JPEG group and grab my swap.
• 9:04 So the left image is the RAW image and the right image is the JPEG. So with 720, because there's less color being captured, the issues that we saw from the differences in color space and the compression with the JPEG are less obvious. The RAW image and the JPEG image on the right look pretty close.
• 9:24 Again, slightly more color saturation in the sky, but pretty close. This might make a case where if you're shooting 720 and you're looking to reduce the amount of editing you're doing, then this might be an acceptable solution for you. Let's move on to IR Chrome filter and we will start with a RAW image.
• 9:43 I will use my color picker to set a white balance. The white balance caps out at the far end of the scale here and I don't like that as much. So I'm gonna select a profile, the custom Chrome profile. And now we can set a white balance on the clouds and this is the result that I get for the RAW image.
• 10:01 JPEG looks pretty good out of camera. You may like this as is without any edits required or maybe a quick auto, but you may not need to do much editing on this at all. So using the Expo Disk 3 and shooting IR Chrome in JPEG does produce pretty good results straight out of camera.
• 10:19 So let's go ahead and just click on set a white balance and just a minor tweak to the color of the sky. If we look over here in the white balance settings, then the actual changes that happened were pretty minor. If I compare the two Chrome images on the left, we have the RAW image.
• 10:36 So it's a little more subdued and it has that larger color space and I can have a more latitude in making edits to it. But then on the right, we have the JPEG, which has already been processed and the color space has been set. If you're looking for less editing to do, then this could be a good way to go shooting IR Chrome in JPEG,
• 10:55 setting a custom white balance in this case with the ExpoDisc 3. Now let's take a look at some infrared video where we set a custom white balance using the ExpoDisc 3. So I've loaded up a few clips from those similar scenes using those four filters into DaVinci Resolve. Let's take a look at how we would process these and set these up.
• 11:15 So I'm gonna go over to the color space and we'll do a couple things here. First of all, over here, I will grab the white balance picker and I will use that to set a white balance on the image. And once I've got a good white balance, I want to brighten this up a bit. So I'm gonna look over here at the scopes and
• 11:31 I wanna get this the scopes levels to be between 0 and 1024 here. But I will go into the gain to bring up the top end and I wanna bring it up close to the top without crushing any of the top levels. So that is pretty good. And now that I've done that, now I can swap my colors. So I'll go into LUTs.
• 11:51 And in this case, I'm gonna load up my PRO Infrared LUTs, which gives me the same color swapping capability as the Lightroom Infrared Color Swap Profiles did for Lightroom. I'll grab my Swap profile and I'm gonna drag it over to the node. And then that gets me the same color treatment for this image.
• 12:10 This is a 550 nanometer image. Let's jump to the next filter. This is the 590 nanometer image. So we'll go through the same process. I will select the white balance picker, set a white balance, bring the gain up a touch. Now that I've got the level set, I can open LUTs. We'll grab the Swap, drag that over to the node.
• 12:32 And now we've got this clip done. The next clip is going to be the 720 nanometer clip. We'll repeat the process, white balance on the clouds, check the levels. We'll bring the gain up a little bit and then we can swap colors. Grab the Swap LUT, drag it over to my node. That one's all set.
• 12:52 And finally, the fourth clip is the IR Chrome filter. And we will complete the same process. White balance on the clouds, then we'll bring the gain up. Okay, so now I've made adjustments to these. I can go back to the edit page and let's take a look at what each of these looks like.
• 13:09 So here is infrared video shot with the 550 nanometer filter. This is gonna be very high saturation with this orange filter. So we can see that we've got our motion here in the grass and the clouds and everything looks pretty good. Now that we've done our color swap, we see a little bit of that fringing
• 13:26 that we saw over on the photo side, but it doesn't look too bad. Here's the 590 nanometer filter. We've white balance, we've color swap, we've made our adjustments. And then this is what the video looks like for a 590 nanometer filter. And this is 720. So we've made the same adjustments.
• 13:44 And this is what our image will look like with a 720 nanometer filter. We have fewer issues with fringing because the 720 is capturing less color. And so things look pretty good over here. Maybe if you're shooting video, maybe stay away from the orange side, which is gonna be highly saturated and stay towards the higher numbered filters.
• 14:02 And finally, we have the IR Chrome filter, which looks pretty good after having a white balance set and then a slight tweaking in the video. The IR Chrome filter is probably a great filter to shoot video on because you don't need to worry about a color swap and the changes that you'll need to make
• 14:17 in the video editing are pretty minor. So let's talk about my overall observations after using the ExpoDisc 3 to set a custom white balance when shooting infrared photo and video. So you don't need a white balance filter if you shoot raw or comfortable setting a white balance during the edit.
• 14:35 So if you have a process that works for you, then you can continue to use that process, then this may not be necessary. The ExpoDisc does make it very easy to set a custom white balance. This could be helpful for tricky lighting situations. There are a couple cases where I think that the ExpoDisc makes the most sense.
• 14:54 If you're shooting with an IR Chrome filter or maybe even a 720 nanometer filter and wish to minimize the editing that you're doing, then this could make a lot of sense. It's an extra step that you need to take when you're shooting, but it's less work that you'll need to do on the editing side.
• 15:09 The other case where I think it makes a lot of sense is if you're shooting infrared video. In infrared video, you may not have the option to shoot in raw, and so setting a custom white balance when shooting infrared is going to be critical. The lighting conditions can change if you change filters.
• 15:25 It's going to be really important to set a custom white balance. And if so, this could be a good case for you if you're shooting infrared video. If you find these videos helpful on your infrared photography journey, like, subscribe, or comment. Hope you enjoyed. Thanks!