White Balance – Get Away from AUTO all the Time
These initial postings have been a bit disjointed. I should follow a better outline and script as we introduce and develop digital photography ideas together. But, I just returned from Ireland and there are these two shots that illustrate a point which is now our second Tip of the Day.
One of the neat things about digital photography is the ability to control white balance. The term refers to the different colors (and wavelengths) of light from different sources. Our eyes are much better at adjusting to different kinds of light – tungsten and fluorescent artificial light versus outdoor, natural light. Before digital controls, we needed different films and filters to keep pictures from having unnatural color castes. Now, instead of using separate camera bodies and films, you can just change the white balance setting on your one camera. This allows you to go from indoor to outdoor light and get it right on the same ‘roll of film’. Sorry for the archaic references but I’m old.
Dublin - Auto WB (20 February 2011)
This was a typical winter day in Dublin. The air was thick with cold humidity. It is not a season with much color. The buildings were gray. The sky was gray. The trees were bare. A lot of time was spent indoors. When I got my first digital camera, I tried to change the WB settings every time the source light changed. While AUTO works pretty well for all light sources, the specific settings are often better. However, one learns early that if you’re going to do that, you best remember to change when the light changes. Tungsten white balance on a sunny day makes the world look like Smurfland. One will burn up a bunch of pixels editing the blue out of everything. It’s easy to keep the camera white balance setting on AUTO because it will get most situations pretty right.
Anyway, when the outdoor scenes are just too gloomy, change the WB setting to ‘cloudy’. That will warm up the picture and give it some life.
Dublin - Cloudy WB (20 February 2011)
posted by Ted Ringger @ 12:33 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Thanks! I'm not always happy with what my camera does to the white balance, but I never think to do anything about it. After reading this post, I'm inspired. My camera can autobracket over a range of white balance settings, which I am going to try.
By the way, congratulations on diving into the blogosphere! I look forward to more posts!
If your camera can do it, why not bracket WB? You will certainly get some unnatural results but there might be some gems in there as well. It just takes more time to go through it all but the 'film' is free.
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