One of the most dangerous things about digital photography is that it makes the photographer a lazy technician. The ease of fixing things in post production becomes an alluring path when you're out shooting.
I recently photographed my daughter's first softball game. OK, it was a scrimmage. But she dressed in her uniform and they played in game conditions, so I consider it her first "game".
Anyway, I dragged out the big lenses and really just shot for fun, but I ended up shooting a gallery of images of her and her teammates. The problem was that I shot much of the action using the "auto" white balance. Naturally as I framed images, the color balance changed slightly throughout the range of images as the camera "saw" different backgrounds and foregrounds. Additionally I could see color shifts as the daylight changed temperatures.
So when I got home and starting editing the images for a web gallery, I spent way too much time correcting for all the variations in color. And, of course, I can't get very consistent color across the spectrum of images on my own.
If I was going to be really diligent I would have whipped out my handy white-balance card and performed the manual white balance every 30 minutes or so. At that time of the day, even overcast light changes temperature fairly quickly. Even as I changed from the auto white balance to the "cloudy" white balance I saw changes in the consistency of the color balance.
So, I can't say the lesson is learned, because I knew the lesson already. It's just a matter of not getting lazy. It's probably OK if you're just looking for two or three images for the family album. But when you start putting tens or hundreds of pictures out there for people to consume, then things become a bit more serious.
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