What is White Balance?
Put simply, white balance is a way of setting the camera up to give good pictures
when you are working under different types of lighting.
Types of Light
'White' light is actually a mixture of all of the colours of the rainbow (literally).
Some types of lamp give out more of one colour than another and can make the light
more orange or more blue depending on what type it is. For example filament
light bulbs are really quite orange in colour. Most strip lights are quite
blue. You don't normally notice this because your brain adjusts what you see
so that it always looks pretty much the same (unless the light is really orange
or really blue). This is a problem when you take photos because the photo
will show things as exactly as they were which is not necessarily what you saw (thanks
to your brain's automatic adjustment). So, if you take a photo of the same
object outside on a sunny day it will look great, but if you go inside, close the
curtains and put the light on you'll get a disappointing picture. It'll look
orange.
Most digital cameras allow you to alter the white balance. Usually there are
settings for sunny and cloudy weather, filament lamps, strip lights etc. Make
sure you pick the right one or your picutres will look odd. Most cameras can
automatically set the white balance too. This works better on some cameras than
others. If you're having trouble getting the picture to look right try manually
setting the white balance.
Custom White Balance
Some cameras also allow you to set the white ballance to suit the exact lighting
conditions. To do this you take a picture of something white (ideally something
like a sheet of white paper). This gives the most accurate setting of white
balance.
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