subject: The Things You Should Know About White Balance While Shooting [print this page] White balance is one of the basic elements of photography, but many digital camera users don't fully understand it, let alone use. But the white balance is worth the effort to learn, which have a very large impact on your photos.
So, if you ignore the white balance, then get start to learn about it. Most simply, the reason why we had to adjust the white balance is to get as accurately as possible colors in the photo.
Why do you need to ensure your photo's color accuracy?
You may have noticed that the color you see can be totally different from the camera see. The photos may show a different color such as orange, blue, yellow. This thing occurred because the environment light sources have a different "color temperature". Fluorescent label photos with blue towards, and Tungsten makes photos slightly yellowed.
The color temperature of the light source can range from blue sky very cold to candle light warm.
We usually don't notice the difference of the color temperature because the eyes have their own adaptive capacity to regulation. So unless the color temperature of the light source is very extreme, otherwise the white paper is white in our eye. However the digital camera cant do these automatically, so often we need to tell the camera how to handle different light sources.
Under cold light source (blue or green), you need to increase the color warm while under warm light you need to add cool color to your camera.
Adjust the white balance
Different digital cameras have different ways of adjusting white balance, you need to read your camera's manual and learn how to change the white balance setting. By the way, many digital cameras have automatic or semi-automatic white balance mode to help you adjust the settings.
Preset white balance settings
Here are some basic white balance settings on the camera:
Auto: the camera will automatically select the cameras "best" setting. In many cases, you will find the auto white balance runs good, but in some special light source will fail.
Tungsten: this mode is suitable for indoor shooting, especially in tungsten environment. Cameras will reduce your picture's color temperature.
Fluorescent lamps improve the photo's color temperature.
Daylight/sunny days: not all cameras have this item and the white balance is set to general.
Cloudy: this setting will increase the color temperature of the photo a little more than daylight mode.
Flash: the Flash will send colder light, flash white balance will improve photo color temperature.
Shadow: the color temperature in the shadow is generally colder than in direct sunlight, so this mode also improves the photo color temperature.
Manual white balance adjustment
In most cases, use those preset white balance can get more accurate results, but some digital cameras (digital single lens reflex cameras and high-end portable camera) also provides the ability to set the white balance manually.
Specific manual settings of different cameras are slightly different, but the basic principle is to tell what's white, and then accurate other colors. You can buy a special white (or gray) card to do the job, or use something appropriate to replace it.
Once you try after will know to manually adjust the white balance is not hard to do, take the time to learn how to use it is very worthy.
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