G1 Camera White Balance Issue

[ElusiveByte]

Hey everyone. My G1's camera has a very odd white balance problem. It's evident on most photos, but especially ones with a more-or-less solid field of color. The center of the picture will always be warm and the edges will always be cool. I would expect the white balance to be the same across the whole photo.

Here is an example picture.

Here is the same picture with exaggerated saturation to make the problem more visible:

This is not from the lighting of the scene. Here is another example:

Does anyone else have this problem? Or do you think my camera's sensor is defective. If it is, then I'll probably get a new phone. It's an annoying effect. I don't expect miracles from a camera phone, but I expect the white balance to be uniform.

Please post your own photos of a white scene for comparison if you have the time. Thanks!

 

[ElusiveByte]

Can someone else please take a picture of a white wall and post it? It shouldn't take but a minute of you time. Thanks!

 

[ElusiveByte]

I tested the G1 at the T-Mobile store and it exhibited the same problem.

 

[mr_strat]

Does anyone else have this problem? Or do you think my camera's sensor is defective. If it is, then I'll probably get a new phone. It's an annoying effect. I don't expect miracles from a camera phone, but I expect the white balance to be uniform.

That's not necessarily the way it works. Your eyes don't see things the same way film or a sensor does.
I would have to have been there in the room at the same time to be able to tell you if that's it or not, but based on decades of professional photography experience, that's likely the case.

 

[Ageless Stranger]

I have a professional D-SLR and when set to auto-white balance, that too sometimes gives incorrect white balance readings, and will sometimes render the same effects you see in your shot.

 

[ElusiveByte]

I own a Canon 10D. It has the same sensor style and DIGIC chips as their pro cameras. I've been shooting with it for years and taken tens of thousands of pictures, and I've never seen a white balance issue like this with a distinct hotspot in the middle. And I use Auto white balance most of the time.

This is a very prounced effect, that is always present, and can even be seen on the screen before you take the shot. It's worse in low light.

I'm also certain that this effect is not a part of the scene. You can reproduce the effect be photographing a white piece of paper, evenly lit by a single light source. The effect follows the camera, wherever you point it.

 

[mr_strat]

I have a professional D-SLR and when set to auto-white balance, that too sometimes gives incorrect white balance readings, and will sometimes render the same effects you see in your shot.

Shoot RAW, not JPG.

 

[ElusiveByte]

Shoot RAW, not JPG.

I'm replying on the other person's behalf.

Whether you shoot RAW or JPEG has no bearing on how the camera calculates white balance. Put your camera on a tripod, take a RAW shot of an unchanging scene with auto white balance, then take another shot with JPEG mode and you will get the exact same white balance.

I will grant you that the RAW file doesn't recordwhite balance in the pixels themselves, but it will store the exact same suggested color temperature and tint (in the metadata) as the JPEG got rendered with. You can ignore the suggested white balance when converting the RAW file to a PSD or JPEG, but the camera will have suggested the same one to begin with as the JPEG got when it was created by the camera.

The JPEG is definitely not going to contain any sort of white balance hot-spot when the RAW one didn't.

 

[mr_strat]

I took this last week while working on computers in one of the campus labs (it's my job). The image is sharp for a cell phone camera...exposure not bad considering the situation...color balance is decent...good depth of field.