White Balance

Author: Quadophile
Published on: 09-12-2004
Views: 47087


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Setting the White Balance

How to set the white balance

If you are familiar with the film cameras, they used “Daylight” balanced films and “Tungsten” balanced films to compensate for the difference in lighting conditions indoors and outdoors. Besides the type of film, there were filters for the same purpose also which photographers used to achieve the correct colour balance. However, in digital cameras there is no film and the setting for achieving the correct colours can be set using white balance control by the users themselves.

Auto and Preset White Balance

On most digital cameras the user will find the white balance setting defaults to “Auto” mode. This setting works in most situations but is not very accurate. To achieve greater accuracy one needs to go into the menu mode and set appropriate preset white balance setting which could be “sunny”, “cloudy”, “flash”, “incandescent”, “fluorescent” etc. Some cameras have even greater control in the sense that the provided presets can be greater in number and may cater to something like “beach”, “snow”, “night scene” etc etc. It is always a good idea to use the specific preset as these settings will achieve better colour accuracy than by just using “Auto”. In my opinion “Auto” really means “Average”, come to think of it, that is what it really is. Why settle for average, when your camera has the required controls, use it to your advantage!

Custom White Balance

Setting the white balance incorrectly not only will make the white appear bluish or reddish (depending on the setting) but will make all the other colours in the image to be rendered incorrectly as well. For example, if you set the white balance to “sunny” and take the photo indoors in “incandescent” light the picture will have predominantly reddish cast overall, on the other hand if the white balance is set to “incandescent” and the picture is taken outdoors, it will have a predominantly bluish cast overall. These two settings are fairly common on most digital cameras and one can experiment with this for better understanding of how the system works. The pictures in this article will give a good idea of what it means by reddish and bluish when incorrect white balance is set.

Automatic/preset modes work on a digital camera in most situations but there are times when the automatic mode becomes a liability, especially in tricky light situations. This is where the user input becomes a necessity and ‘White Balance' is needed to be precisely set to achieve the desired, acceptable or correct results. Custom or user defined white balance is extremely useful when lighting conditions are confusing and you need the most accurate colour. With custom white-balance control, you point the camera at something white and tell the camera to adjust itself accordingly, which will make the white a pure white, without color cast. You can also use 18% grey card like in olden days when using film cameras. Even a white T-shirt your subject is wearing can be used to set the white balance. The Custom White Balance can be effectively used both indoors and outdoors to achieve correct colour balance.