White Balance-What is it ?

White balance (WB) is considered by some, as one of the most important settings of a digital camera. Consider a scenario where you wish to capture a mountain lake along with the shore and you have an overcast sky as the background. If you don’t use the correct white balance setting on your digital camera, you will get a picture with colors different from the actual ones. So in order to produce a perfectly exposed image with true to life colors, you must learn to effectively use the white balance setting of your digital camera.

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To understand the concept of White Balance, you need to first understand the concept of color temperature. Color temperature is a characteristic of visible light. It provides a method of describing these characteristics and is measured in Kelvin (K). A light having higher color temperature will have more blue light or larger Kelvin value as compared to lower light, which has a smaller Kelvin value. The following table shows the color temperature of various sources of light.

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Why Change your White Balance ?

Because there are different sources of light that have different color hues, a picture taken with a normal white balance under artificial lighting conditions transmits the low heat to the camera’s sensor. This light touches the red bits of the spectrum, which results into dull yellow or orange shades in the picture. Though the human eyes can automatically adjust to different lights and color temperatures to sense right color, a camera needs to be adjusted to different lights for accurate color reproduction. By adjusting the white balance setting of your digital camera, you can alter the required light or temperature to produce the most accurate colors in a digital image.

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Preset White Balance settings and there meanings

Auto – The Auto setting helps in adjusting the white balance automatically according to the different lighting conditions, but you can try other modes to get better results.

Tungsten – This mode is used for light under a little bulb like tungsten, and it is often used while shooting indoors. The tungsten setting of the digital camera cools down the color temperature in photos.

Fluorescent – This mode is used for getting brighter and warmer shots while compensating for cool shade of fluorescent light.

Flash – The flash mode is required when there is inadequate lighting available. This mode helps pick the right White Balance under low light conditions.

Daylight – This mode is for the normal day light setting, while shooting outdoors. Many cameras do not have the Daylight mode.

Shade – A shaded location generally produces cooler or bluer pictures, hence you need to warm up the surroundings while shooting shaded objects.

Cloudy – This mode is ideal for while shooting on a cloudy day. This is because it warms up the subject and surroundings and allows you to capture better shots.

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I hope this helps you to acheive the perfect color balance in your next photos.