For example - if you work in an office with standard fluorescent lights, you still see a white shirt as white. The roses the receptionist received will appear brilliantly red to your eyes.
Your digital camera is not as color accurate.
If you take a photo under the same fluorescent, without making the appropriate adjustments to your camera’s white balance everything in your photo will have a creepy yellow-green color cast. In fact, every type of light has its own inherent color cast.
Why your eyes are so cool.
Your eyes, in combination with your brain, automatically filters out all these color imperfections. Your digital camera is not so talented. However, you can help it by using its white balance.
White balance is one of the controls that give digital photography a HUGE edge over film photography. It works on the principle that light in a scene will add the same amount of the same color cast over the entire scene.
So… to adjust the cameras perceptions of color so that it captures white as truly white, the camera need to analyze how much of what color contaminant needs to be removed from the whites. That removal of color is applied to the entire scene, giving you more realistic colors in your photos.
Your Digital Camera’s White Balance Presets
Most digital cameras have the the following white balance presets.
AutoDaylightIncandescent (household light bulbs)FluorescentShadeCloudyFlash Auto White Balance AWB
Depending on your camera brand, some AWB works better than others. as a general rule, though, AWB works pretty well in sunny and cloudy outdoors, and works fine for most indoors situations.
Set your digital camera to AWB and take pictures under incandescent, fluorescent, and mixed lighting (i.e. incandescent or fluorescent, plus natural light coming through the window), and see if you like the results. If you do, you can just use AWB.
Custom White Balance
Custom white balance is probably one of the easiest custom tools you’ll ever use. Simply do the following:
1. Activate custom white balance in your camera. (Check your camera manual to determine what buttons and/or dials select the command.)
2. Put a piece of white paper in your scene, under the lights you plan to use. Try a sheet of standard photocopy paper.
3. Zoom in so that the white paper fills your viewfinder.
4. Press the shutter button.
That’s it! Your camera’s white balance is now set to fully understand how to handle the colors of the scene under those specific lights.
Tip
