The reason we adjust white balance is to get the colours in photographs as accurate as possible. The way our eyes see the images.
Digital cameras don't make adjustments the same as our eyes.
We need to tell the camera that if the light is cool (blue like fluorescent light) we need to warm it up and make it more yellow.
If the light is warm (yellow like a light bulb) we need to cool it down and make it more blue.
We need to tell the camera that if the light is cool (blue like fluorescent light) we need to warm it up and make it more yellow.
If the light is warm (yellow like a light bulb) we need to cool it down and make it more blue.
Adjusting white balance
White Balance Settings
White Balance Settings
- Auto – this is where the camera makes a best guess.
- Tungsten – usually symbolised with a little bulb. Good for shooting indoors, especially with yellow bulb lighting as it cools down the colours by adding blue.
- Fluorescent – adds yellow to warm up a photograph.
- Daylight/Sunny – not all cameras have this setting because it sets things as fairly ‘normal’ white balance settings.
- Cloudy – this setting generally warms things up a touch more than ‘daylight’ mode.
- Flash – the flash of a camera can be quite a cool light so in Flash WB mode you’ll find it warms up your shots a touch.
- Shade – the light in shade is generally cooler (bluer) than shooting in direct sunlight so this mode will warm things up a little.
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.
So for those of you who have been avoiding White Balance – let me introduce you to it. I promise to keep it as simple as possible and keep what follows as useable as I can:
At its simplest – the reason we adjust white balance is to get the colors in your images as accurate as possible.
Why would you need to get the color right in your shots?
You might have noticed when examining shots after taking them that at times images can come out with an orange, blue, yellow etc look to them – despite the fact that to the naked eye the scene looked quite normal. The reason for this is that images different sources of light have a different ‘color’ (or temperature) to them. Fluorescent lighting adds a bluish cast to photos whereas tungsten (incandescent/bulbs) lights add a yellowish tinge to photos.
The range in different temperatures ranges from the very cool light of blue sky through to the very warm light of a candle.
We don’t generally notice this difference in temperature because our eyes adjust automatically for it. So unless the temperature of the light is very extreme a white sheet of paper will generally look white to us. However a digital camera doesn’t have the smarts to make these adjustments automatically and sometimes will need us to tell it how to treat different light.
So for those of you who have been avoiding White Balance – let me introduce you to it. I promise to keep it as simple as possible and keep what follows as useable as I can:
At its simplest – the reason we adjust white balance is to get the colors in your images as accurate as possible.
Why would you need to get the color right in your shots?
You might have noticed when examining shots after taking them that at times images can come out with an orange, blue, yellow etc look to them – despite the fact that to the naked eye the scene looked quite normal. The reason for this is that images different sources of light have a different ‘color’ (or temperature) to them. Fluorescent lighting adds a bluish cast to photos whereas tungsten (incandescent/bulbs) lights add a yellowish tinge to photos.
The range in different temperatures ranges from the very cool light of blue sky through to the very warm light of a candle.
We don’t generally notice this difference in temperature because our eyes adjust automatically for it. So unless the temperature of the light is very extreme a white sheet of paper will generally look white to us. However a digital camera doesn’t have the smarts to make these adjustments automatically and sometimes will need us to tell it how to treat different light.