Beginner's Guide: What Is the White Balance Setting on my Digital Camera?

Have you ever taken a picture of a beautiful winter scene and been disappointed to discover the crisp, white snow came out with a bluish tint? This is the kind of situation your digital camera’s white balance is meant to prevent.

The white balance is a sensor that analyzes the lighting conditions and colors of a scene and adjusts so the white in the picture appears white. This helps insure the other colors appear as natural as possible. This is one advantage digital photography has over tradition film. With film, you buy with a certain lighting condition in mind. If that changes, you need to either change your film or hope you can fix any errors in post-production.

Most digital cameras allow you to use either automatic white balance or choose between several preset conditions.

Here are some of the basic White Balance settings you’ll find on cameras:

Auto – this is where the camera makes a best guess on a shot by shot basis. You’ll find it works in many situations but it’s worth venturing out of it for trickier lighting.
Tungsten – this mode is usually symbolized with a little bulb and is for shooting indoors, especially under tungsten (incandescent) lighting (such as bulb lighting). It generally cools down the colors in photos.
Fluorescent – this compensates for the ‘cool’ light of fluorescent light and will warm up your shots.
Daylight/Sunny – not all cameras have this setting because it sets things as fairly ‘normal’ white balance settings.
Cloudy – this setting generally warms things up a touch more than ‘daylight’ mode.
Flash – the flash of a camera can be quite a cool light so in Flash WB mode you’ll find it warms up your shots a touch.
Shade – the light in shade is generally cooler (bluer) than shooting in direct sunlight so this mode will warm things up a little.

Practice taking the same photo with different white balance settings to get a feel for the changes each setting evokes. Keep notes until you have a good idea of what each setting does. In time, you will come to automatically sense which setting is best for your particular situation.

White balance is a small setting that can make big changes in your finished photos. Make it your friend and you will no longer have to worry about faded sunsets or blue snow.

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