Understand The Role Of White Balance In Digital Cameras

White balance is central to photography

White balance is central to photography. It is the way in which the camera captures colors as they are. In theory when you white balance a picture, you essentially ensure that the white in real looks as white in the picture too. What this does is that it enables the digital cameras sensors to interpret other colors correctly. However this is easier said than done. There are various shades of white, some cooler (which render a bluer tint) and others warmer (which render a yellowish tint) that can confuse the camera and you may end up capturing altered colors.

To counter this, modern digital cameras come loaded with White Balance presets most noteworthy of which is the Auto White Balance mode. It is also by far the most commonly used White Balance preset by default. Auto White Balance in digital cameras tries to average out the color temperatures and thus capture an average color picture. This may or may not be to your liking.

So what does one do?

The answer lies in the plethora of other white balance presets such as Cloudy, Shade, Florescent et al. These presets work in an interesting way. While they stand for a certain condition like Shade or Cloudy, they work differently. They try to average out such conditions e.g a Cloudy preset tries to compensate for the bluish tones present in shade and bring in more of warm tone in the picture. A cloudy does the same. Florescent, on the other hand, does the opposite.

The most powerful preset of all is the Custom White Balance preset. It is the most difficult to master as well. To use this preset, you need to select a white or a grey spot in the picture that define the perfect grey and use that as a reference for rest of the colors. Once chosen, the same custom white balance can be used across different images, given that the lighting conditions are the same.

In short, one should remember that role of white balance is to capture colors as the eye sees it. By dialing through the various modes and presets, you can learn what preset suits the conditions and leverage that to capture crisp pictures.

by: Aditya Tanwar

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