White Balance

Different digital cameras have different ways of adjusting the white balance, you’ll need to get out your camera’s manual to work out the specifics of how to make the changes. 

Pre-set White Balance Settings

Here are some of the basic White Balance settings that you’ll find on digital cameras: 

Auto – this is where the camera makes a guess on a shot by shot basis. You’ll find it works in many situations but it’s worth experimenting with the other selections for trickier lighting.

Tungsten – this mode is usually identified as a little bulb and is for shooting indoors, especially under tungsten (incandescent) lighting (such as bulb lighting). It generally cools down the colours 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.

Manual White Balance Adjustments

In most cases you can get a pretty accurate result using the above pre-set white balance modes –  some digital cameras (most DSLRs and higher end point and shoot models) allow for manual white balance adjustments as well.

The way this is used varies little between makes and models, in essence what you are  doing is telling your camera what white looks like in a shot so that it has something as a reference point for deciding how other colours should look. You can do this by visiting a photography store and  buying yourself a white (or grey 18%) card which is specifically designed for this task. 

Try the different settings and experiment for yourself, this will help you to become a better photographer and create better photo's