white balance question

[brucet]

When you load a Raw, NEF, what White Balance setting is used if you leave it as 'As Shot'?

Regards

[brucet]

OK it seems no one knows. Anyone? My guess is that it's picking up the White Balance setting from the imbedded JPEG.

regards

[afx]

AS takes the WB information embedded in the raw file, the embedded JPG is completely irrelevant.

cheers
afx

[brucet]

afx my understanding is that Raw/NEF's have no white balance setting/s. Just the data as captured. When I change the various white balance settings, in AS, I get different results. Even 'As Shot'. So my question is, "Where does the 'As Shot' setting come from"? The strange this is that more often than not the 'As Shot' turns out to be the best choice.

regards

[afx]

afx my understanding is that Raw/NEF's have no white balance setting/s. Just the data as captured.

Well, that is wrong.
Especially for auto white balance, the camera needs to encode the generated WB information.
You might want to google nikon and encypted WB for confirmation.

So my question is, "Where does the 'As Shot' setting come from"?

"As Shot" is decoding the embedded WB information.

cheers
afx

[FalCT60]

Hello,
For what I know, "As shot" retrieves the data that was set when shooting. It the value was set to "flash", then it will use that value to display the picture. Which doens't mean it is the best choice, and you may need to change this : for instance if you shot a scene with a strong fluorescent lighting, even using a flash, you might need to change to "fluorescent" in order to get rid of the awful greenish rendering. As you wrote, "as shot is not often the best choice".
So, getting different renderings by selecting various settings is normal. It is just a matter of tweaking white balance and tint values. You could as well do this manually (good luck!).
Trying to compare with jpeg embedded value isn't a good idea. As afx wrote, that is totally irrelevant.
Moreover, starting from a jpeg produced by the camera as a model isn't a good idea at all : those jpegs are created based upon the tastes of people that don't necesserally share yours. I mean : the fact that 1 000 000 people like reddish skin tint doesn't mean the skin rendering has to be reddish for you (nor me!).
I had a discussion about this a few times ago with a friend who has the same camera and lens as I, but who shot jpeg and thought that the results were better than raw. He's been shooting raws since then.
Hope it will help,

J.-L.