Understanding White Balance (Or when white isn't white)


Have you ever taken photos of people in your house and discovered that everyone looks like they have an orange, spray-on tan? Or maybe you've taken photos on an overcast day and everyone looks like they are smurfs? The reason this may be happening has to do with something called "White Balance".

White balance, is a setting on your camera that helps the camera see the accurate color temperature of white. Cameras are pretty dumb when it comes to understanding color and many of them have to guess at what "white" actually looks like. Our eyes, on the other hand, are perfectly capable of understanding what white is because our brains are very good at knowing these things.

Therefore, since this is all known by the camera manufacturers, they have conveniently included a setting on almost every camera that allows you to help the camera figure this out. The setting is called...wait for it...White Balance. White balance can either be found on your camera in the form of a button or somewhere in your menu (as usual, it is best to consult your user manual for this). You can adjust your white balance by changing the settings based upon the lighting you are in, such as incandescent, fluorescent, daylight, shade, etc. The auto white balance on most cameras is pretty pathetic when you are in any extreme situations where the lighting gives off an unusual color temperature.

Your assignment today is to find your white balance setting in your camera and play around with different white balance settings to see what works best for your preferences.

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