White balance is probably one of the last camera settings that most people think to change. That is, until they look at the photo they took of their gorgeous child outside in the shade and it looks very blue. Or they notice that the photo that they took in their living room looks orange. White balance can make your photos look gorgeous or yucky.
What is White Balance?
There is some science involved with white balance, but for the sake of simpleness let’s just say that all light has a different color to it. You may have noticed this if you have ever looked at a fluorescent light bulb and a regular light bulb next to each other. White balance is your camera’s way of compensating for the color of light so that whites look white and grays look gray!
White Balance Presets
Here is a quick rundown of the white balance presets in your camera with both pictures and words!
- Auto: Your camera will adjust the white balance settings for you based on the what it “sees” in the photo. Generally, auto isn’t perfect, but is pretty close.
- Sunlight: This setting will compensate for the orange cast (adds slight blue) that can be really overpowering on a bright sunny day.
- Cloudy: This setting will correct (adds orange) for the slight bluish tone that is found on a cloudy day.
- Shade: This setting will correct (adds more orange than cloudy setting) for the bluish tones that are found in the shade.
- Tungsten (also Incandescent): This setting will correct (adds blue) for the orange tones created by incandescent light bulbs.
- Fluorescent: This type of light generally gives a blue tone to your pictures (although light colors can vary with fluorescent.) This setting corrects for blue tones by adding orange.
- Flash: This setting will correct for the slight blue color of an on-flash with a little bit of orange.
- Custom: This setting will help you set a custom white balance using a gray card. Your camera manual will give you more detailed instructions on how to do this.
Experiment with your camera’s white balance presets and try to get the right white balance in your photos!
Thank you so much for posting this! I love to learn new things for my camera settings.
Donna
Do you find custom white balance a good option to use? How about changing for WB in post-processing? Lose any thing by doing that? Thanks!
I only use custom white balance when I know it is a tricky white balance situation–strong color cast from a building/grass/trees for example. I use Auto and the presets most of the time.
I change my WB while post processing all the time! You don’t lose anything by doing that. You have the most latitude if you also shoot in RAW.
I always shoot in RAW! That was the best tip I ever heard when I first started shooting! Thanks for the white balance info~ I love how you explained what colors each setting adds! <3
I recently struggled with this on a few tops!!! -Turquoise colored… turning Blue! Thanks for your tips! I appreciate them! 🙂
I neeeed this info, thank you, thank you!
how about how to set up custom white balance in lehman’s terms. I have fought with color issues for 2 years.. Yes ive callibrated and the more i know the worse it gets… 🙂
I’ll work on a post for that, Jessica. Do you process your photos? If so, what do you use for that? Do you use the RAW file format or JPEG? If these questions are a foreign language–just ignore ;)!
An advice on using Kelvin? I was having trouble with custom, so I switched to Kelvin, but I’m still learning and i feel like it takes me three tries to get it right every time my lighting changes. But, I do like the resul when I get it right!
I don’t really have any advice on using Kelvin since I don’t use it. It is too much of a guessing game for me and when I am photographing, I typically need to move faster.
If I can’t get the white balance right in camera, I just make a quick simple adjustment in post-processing. Adobe’s Lightroom (http://amzn.to/LE6cVA) makes it super easy to adjust white balance during processing. Wish I could be of more help!
Thank you so much for this post and all the other features you have done here! I am a very visual person and my journey through photography has been made easier by wonderful people like you who share such great and helpful tutorials! I shared your white balance preset collage with my readers this week in hopes that they can learn from your tutorials too! I would love for you to stop by sometime. Thank you again!
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– Amber @ jRoxDesigns