If you have a digital camera you will most probably have seen the “white balance” or “WB” button, but what is it? In a nutshell if the human eye looks at a sheet of white paper in the morning it looks white because our eye adjusts to white automatically but the camera will see the paper as having a blue cast.
If the same bit of paper was held up in front of our eye at lunchtime and again at sunset our eye still compensates and sees the paper as white but not so with the camera. So you can set your camera at “auto white balance” which takes an average only and is most of the time incorrect.
You can change to the little icons for “sun” “shade” “incandescent” “fluro” or “night” all of these are ok but nowhere as good as setting the exact white balance for the light you are in. Go to set white balance if your camera has it – say yes, then aim your camera at a piece of white paper filling the whole frame (you may have to turn of the auto focus) press the shutter release (like taking a photo) and it will be “set” just for where you are now – if you move to another area you would have to change is again.
It is important to note that when you set your white balance all the colours in your photo will be correct and without colour cast even if your subject is standing right next to a yellow wall.
I never knew that. Thanks so much for the post. I never really knew how the settings in my digital camera work. This has been great help.
thanks i just got a nicer camera and im trying to learn these things, this is a cool trick
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I would like to give someone a gift voucher to get their family photographed. Does anyone know of any good places preferrably in the Western suburbs of Melbourne?
I could fly over!!
I am having sony cybershot dsc t500 digital camera with me. I personally feel that if you have a good digital camera, you can over come on these problems. MY sony cybershot dsc t500 digital camera is doing the best for me. You should try it.
baby care takes much dedication and patience. it is really not that easy to take care of babies.`**
right now i am researching about baby care because my sister is having a baby;”,
great information you write it very clean. I am very lucky to get this tips from you.
i love to care for my baby and i think baby care is a full time job;.’
wah.. the first photo is phenomenal. you could also WB to manipulate photo’s color like make it more warmer.. like your first photo.
andri: So by changing the white balance of the second one you could make it warmer? It’s snow…why would you want to?
Anyways nice tips for those who don’t know how to use it. Maybe you could add information on kelvin, etc. to make another post.
baby care is a very delicate task but i really love taking care of my baby:-`
White Balance is an aspect of photography that many digital camera owners don’t understand or use – but it’s something well worth learning about as it can have a real impact upon the shots you take. great information you write it very clean.
when we got our baby, our first priority is to give them the best baby care that we could give ‘:~
Great concise article and I love the photos. White balance is something that makes digital photography a gift sent from heaven compared with film and all the filters you have to have to correct for different light sources!
I couldn’t agree with you more about choosing the white balance yourself manually. There are certain situations, and snow is a good example, where you just cannot get the correct colour temperature with the cameras WB presets, and mixed lighting with interior shots is even more of a nightmare. I was photographing a supermarket interior recently for an architectural commission and there were over ten different light sources each with different temperatures optimized to make various produce look most attractive. At times like that you can go colour confused trying to optimize for all of them so I think you have to make an overall judgement based on how the picture looks as a whole, making it look as natural as possible (unless of course you want different effects).
I absolutely never ever use automatic white balance because it can get things sooo wrong! In my view there is little point in having an SLR if you shoot everything in auto mode, it’s a waste of the cameras creative potential.
I am very fond of photography and this post is excellent as it touches the heart and very much sophisticated. Maintaining balance is an art and needs to be learn in an even fashion.
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Superb web site. A lot of practical info here. I am delivering it to a few friends ans also spreading in delicious. And of course, great sweat!