Not all digital cameras are created equal, but for the most part, they have a lot of the same features.  I have seen some sort of white balance control on 2 mega-pixel cameras all the way to the professional level, where proper white balance can mean the life or death of an image.  Today I will discuss what white balance is and, when it is ok to adjust.  I will go over how to set your own preset white balance next week, a very powerful tool for any digital shooter.

What Balance?

In your digital camera, under one of the menus, there may be a setting called “White Balance” or possibly, “Color Temperature.”  If you select this, you will be taken to a menu listing at least some of these: AUTO (the digital camera decides the appropriate white balance), INCANDESCENT (this is the light given off by the traditional tungsten light bulb), FLOURESCENT (a fluorescent tube light), CLOUDY or SHADE, SUNNY, FLASH and PRESET 1, 2, etc.

So when should you change these?  As a rule, leave it on AUTO for most of your general photography.  If you play with this setting a lot, you may forget that you had changed it and could shoot for who knows how long in any specific setting, possibly ruining your images.  But, I am not saying you should never use these other settings, they can be very useful and powerful when applied appropriately.

AUTO:  Use this setting as your default.  This is so you know, whenever you turn your camera on, it’s ready to go.  When I shoot digitally, at the end of each shoot I always check my white balance and set it back to AUTO.  This way, I never hesitate if I suddenly have to take a photograph without much time to prepare.

INCANDESCENT:  Use this setting for indoor lighting that is lit with tungsten light bulbs (traditional household lights) only, with no flash.  When you have this white balance applied, you are telling the camera that every photo you are taking is being lit by orange-yellow light, and therefore will counteract this light by adding blue to your photos.  This is the same affect as if you were to use tungsten film in your film camera.  The result will be accurate so long as there aren’t any other light sources in the frame.  If there is window light, a flash going off, or a fluorescent bulb in your photograph, you may see blues, greens or other colors where they shouldn’t be.

It can happen to you!  Shooting outdoors with incandescent white balance or with tungsten film can produce saddening results.

FLOURESCENT:  Nothing is harsher or harder to shoot in then fluorescent light, but if you have too, try using this setting.  Again, if you use a flash with this setting you will get horribly discolored images.

CLOUDY/SHADE:  These two settings do generally the same thing and can be unreliable.  They add warm tones to your image, orange, red and yellow.  We don’t notice this with our eyes, but cameras pick up on the blue light that is in shadows and the shade.  These settings will compensate for this blue light, and can pleasantly inaccurate (i.e. creating a warm colored light on a subject on a cold, cloudy day).

SUNNY/FLASH:  These two settings are slightly different, but they act in much of the same way the cloudy/shade setting do.  They add slightly less amounts of warm tones to the image.  Using these settings can be just as important as setting your camera for incandescent light, though you may not immediately think so.  In a film camera, we can think of the film we use in it as being at the “sunny” or “flash” setting in our digital camera.  Some people may confuse the idea that film is more like “auto,” when it is nothing like it at all.  When the digital camera is set on AUTO, the brain inside the camera reads the colors in the photo and balances it as it sees appropriate.  Most of the time it is right, but sometimes it can be wrong.  The point I am trying to make is that you can leave your digital camera on one of these settings as a default, and you will get desirable results more often (unless you shoot under artificial light without a flash, then you will need to change settings.)

Shooting with tungsten light while using the wrong white balance setting (in this case "flash") can be used creatively to create interesting images.

I hope this helps you understand white balance when you use your digital camera.  A great exercise to help understand these settings better is to simply shoot the same image several different times using a different white balance setting for each shot.  Then, look at the differences in each of these images on your computer and note the effects.  Note: If you shoot RAW, any changes you make to the white balance in the camera will have no affect, RAW files are meant to be corrected "post-processing."

Now remember, not all digital cameras are created equal! It may take some experimentation with your specific camera model, so try it out.  I would love to see your images of experimenting with white balance, please post them.

Now get out there and shoot!

- Catherine Bligh, http:///www.cblighphotography.com

Read on next Thursday for “Preset White Balance and What Your Missing.”

All images ©2006, Catherine Bligh, Photography and may not be used for any purpose or on any other website without permission.