Nikon Z6 White balance issue

[Romain_Th]

Hi,

It seems like the white balance coeffs are not good in the Nikon Z6 profiles.

All RAW require -30 to -60 in tint. As a result, the white balance presets cannot be used because they will render the images very pinky.

The auto white balance cannot be used also.

In addition the "camera profiles" seem off: skin tones shift toward yellow in the Camera Standard profil comparing to the Jpegs. The adobe color is actually closer to the standard jpegs than the dedicated profile.

Cheers,

Romain

[Romain_Th]

For information, this is not happening with the Z7 profiles.

[Jao vdL]

I have been seeing I need quite large negative tint values for my Z7 too but more like -10 to -20 and strong pink coloration using "auto" button and white balance presets. I do get really good correspondence to in camera jpeg out of the box since Lightroom picks up the in-camera selected profile for these cameras and other settings. Perhaps you should report a bug with these at https://feedback.photoshop.com . Adobe engineers don't really frequent this forum (it's just other users) but they do look at the feedback site for bug reports and suggestions.

[Romain_Th]

After reviewing the Z7 photos, you're right, most of them are between -20 and 0.

I have never had such problems with other cameras (used to use LR for multiple Sony and Nikon cameras).

By the way, there is an issue logged here: Lightroom/Camera Raw: Nikon Z6 RAW processing and Adobe WB | Photoshop Family Customer Community

[greg14]

I just got the Z6 and I am having the following issue shooting in RAW :
LR is making adjustments on its own.
When using the new S lenses (35 F1-8 & 24-70 F4) LR is adding +33 to exposure and +10 to Shadows, these are fixed as I cannot go back to zero, the new zero is +33 and +10 for each.
Adding to the issue is that when I use a F Nikon Lens (50mm F1.8) with the Z adapter in addition to the 2 adjustments above it changes contrast at all different numbers, I shot 150 pictures and it ranged for -12 to +10.

This is obvious a LR problem, I have used LR for 2 Nikon bodies (610 & 750) and a Canon P&S G9x with no changes to the LR adjustment panel.
The settings for the Z6 are the same as my D750, with a few new ones that for the most part are not picture enchantments.
WB= Auto 1 (Neutral), Picture Control = Auto.

If anyone has this type of issue please add yours.
Lightroom if you are reading this, please look into this,

Thanks,

Greg

[Jao vdL]

Greg,

these settings are not automatic, they are controlled by the in-body settings in your Z6. Your Z6 saves the in-camera settings in camera-raw specific settings in its NEF files. The Z7 and Z6 are the only cameras that do this. No other camera writes develop settings for Lightroom/Camera Raw. Lightroom reads these and applies them by default. These include the picture profile, the contrast settings, the brightness, saturation, active D-lighting, vignette and lens correction, etc. So in your case, you probably turned on active D-lighting, which has the effect of dialing in some exposure compensation and shadow brightening to approximate the in-camera jpeg. To get rid of this, simply change those settings in your camera. Biggest one is to turn off D-lighting if you want zeros in the imported raw. You can also change the defaults for the cAmera in Lightroom but then the in-camera settings will simply get ignored.

[greg14]

First of all, WOW !
I do not think that is a good idea by Nikon.
I turned it off and will see tomorrow if it works

Thanks,

Greg

[Jao vdL]

The idea is probably that the images will always come into Lightroom looking like what you saw on the camera's screen. This is indeed what Nikon accomplishes. At least it cuts down on people being wrongly upset that Lightroom changes the look of their raw files when they import. Also, it is amazing to me that Nikon finally sees the light that most people use other software for raw development than their own. The only thing I haven't been able to fix by simply playing with the in-camera settings is that the camera writes really strange sharpening settings with a sharpening radius of 2 to all files. This kills a lot of fine detail in the images if your lenses are good. It does correspond to Nikon's in camera sharpening on jpegs which I never liked. I now simply apply an import preset that fixes the sharpening to more reasonable values that don't kill fine detail.

[greg14]

The sharpening that you refer to, I gather you are saying that it is a permanent adjustment built into the Z series.
That seems odd to me, that they would not stay with the old adage, WYSIWYG.
I see where in Picture control it has sharpening sliders but they are adjustable, I have them set to zero.

Live long enough you see it all,  LLOL

[Jao vdL]

If you set them to zero in camera, Lightroom will also have a zero sharpening set so that will work. What I was referring to is the radius setting which comes in as a radius of 2 pixels no matter what you do, which is generally way too high but does look more like what Nikon does to their jpegs. Since every raw file needs at least a bit of sharpening to counteract the effect of the Bayer array and other effects occurring in the lens and diffraction of the aperture, it would be better if this came into Lightroom with more reasonable numbers but a simple preset works.

[greg14]

As I previously stated, the original 2 changed settings of Exposure and shadows are reset to zero (0) after I took Active D-Lighting off, (did not realize that I had it on). Thank you guys, for telling me that.
I took about 60 pictures (RAW) last night using a variety of settings as a test, flash, no flash, manual, Auto and there was a consistent minus for the contrast at -7 or -12.

I searched in various settings and contrast settings that I found are at zero.

Does anyone know where else I should look?

I do not recall making any user settings or memory retention.

There is always the possibility of hitting a button by accident.

[Jao vdL]

Greg, you probably have contrast set to auto in your picture control. Go into the shooting menu (the camera icon), select "Set picture control" and go into the picture control you are using. Then go down to contrast and make sure it is set to zero and not to the "A". Also make sure Brightness, Saturation and Hue are set to zero.

[greg14]

That was one of the first things I looked at, I doubled checked and contrast is at 0 zero.

[Jao vdL]

Weird. My Z7 doesn’t do this so curious what the difference in settings is

[Bach 59]

Regarding WB portion of the post, I had an email conversation with Thom Hogan and this was his response:

“Adobe’s white balance numbers have never been rational or correct. Adobe has a different color model for color than Nikon does. Nikon tends to use a variation of the old Luminance+color model used in video, while Adobe uses a strange RGB hue shift model that doesn’t align well.”

[Yurifi]

interesting, because lately I've been using other photo editing software options, and White Balance values simply work, obviously, Adobe is the only one having this problem ...

and it is quite a problem for me when I work, i.e. with two cameras, one of them being Z6 and then you try to copy/paste some settings and if Color Profile is not Adobe's, White Balance gets really messy ... is there any chance Adobe would approach and solve this issue? I was really eager to try this with today's update but unfortunately this was not addressed, yet ...

[johnrellis]

"is there any chance Adobe would approach and solve this issue?"

See here for the open bug report on Z 6 white balance issues:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/bug-reports-nikon-z6-raw-processing-and-adobe...

Be sure to click Me Too and Follow in the upper-right corner.  Adobe has acknowledged problems with Z 6 white balance and has marked this bug report as "In Progress", which means they've got an internal bug report filed on this and are working on it.  But Adobe rarely indicates when they plan to have a bug fixed.

LR 9 just came out today but they haven't published a fixed-bug list yet.

[Use the reply button under the first post to ensure replies sort properly.]