White Balancing

Apart from Shutter speed, Aperture priority and ISO we have one more setting called White Balance. It is also known as Color balancing. Most of the us would not have tried it out.

It is a way to correct all the colors in your image to take account of the light they were shot with. Simply put white balancing is about telling the camera how each color looks in different light conditions. We need to set the white balancing correctly to get the colors in the image as accurate as possible. Most of the digital cameras have Auto White Balancing option, but it may not give you correct colors in all light conditions.

For white balancing the camera has to take into account the "color temperature" of a light source, which refers to the relative warmth or coolness of white light. We will look at it later. Our eyes are very good at judging what is white under different light sources, but digital cameras often have great difficulty with auto white balance (AWB). If the white balancing is not adjusted correctly it creates unsightly blue, orange, or even green color casts. Understanding digital white balance can help you avoid these color casts, thereby improving your photos under a wider range of lighting conditions.

Apart from AWB all digital cameras provide wide range of options for different light conditions. These presets may not always work perfectly. We can custom adjust the white balancing to get most accurate colors in our image. While using custom adjust all we need to do is point the camera to a white spot in the shot to let the camera know how white color looks under the present light conditions. Depending on how white color looks the camera then will decide how all the other colors look. Look at the table below showing different presets that are provided by most of the digital cameras.

		Auto White Balance
		Custom
		Tungsten
		Fluorescent
		Daylight
		Flash
		Cloudy
		Shade

• Auto – this is where the camera makes a best guess on a shot by shot basis. You’ll find it works in many situations but it’s worth venturing out of it for trickier lighting.

• Tungsten – this mode is usually symbolized with a little bulb and is for shooting indoors, especially under tungsten (incandescent) lighting (such as bulb lighting). It generally cools down the colors in photos.
• Fluorescent – this compensates for the ‘cool’ light of fluorescent light and will warm up your shots.
• 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.

Look at the following links for more information on White balancing.

• http://www.digital-photography-school.com/introduction-to-white-balance
• http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm
• http://www.pixiq.com/article/white-balance