| Photography Forum: Photography Help Forum: |
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Q. White Balance
Asked by * James *
(K=20200) on 1/5/2005
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i tried to search for answers but the search function seems to be down.
i've read the manual that came with my camera (fuji S7000), however, can anyone tell me, in practical terms, when do i need to concern myself with adjusting the white balance on my camera?
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Adam E. J. Squier
(K=9803) - Comment Date 1/5/2005
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You set the white balance according to the kind of light that your subject is in. Outside, set to sunny, cloudy, shade, or whatever light you're in. Inside, set to flash (if you're using flash), tungsten, fluorescent, or whatever the lighting is.
Or you can leave it on "auto" and hope for the best.
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Alejandro Mendez
(K=2066) - Comment Date 1/5/2005
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Adam's answer is perfect, although to give you more insight on why do you have to do this, the white " color " as the human eye sees it can change according to the light source. Our brain knows this and adjust it self so we can always see white as white and not yellow or blueish tones...Digital Cameras and Camcorders can not do this, so they need to know what kind of light source are they recording and will adjust the photo or video colors to match the real white.
Me myself do not like the auto mode, so my suggestion is always try to set the white balance to the right light source...
Hope this helps!
Cheers!
AMC
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Scott McFadden
(K=5663) - Comment Date 1/6/2005
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Getting the correct white balance also enables a greater color range capture so its worth learning how to set it manually.
speaking of manualls read yours if you havent got one or lost it borrow a magic lantern guide for your camera from your local library.
while there loan some basic photography books too.
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Jenny Brown
(K=2859) - Comment Date 1/7/2005
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Indoor light (incandescent) has a yellowish cast. If you take a picture with that yellowish light, people will look bronzed or sickly yellow, and (for instance) a white teddy bear would look tan. Additionally, purple/blue items would look paler than they should, because it's the complementary color of yellow.
If you set your white balance to incandescent, the teddy bear goes back to looking white, the people regain their natural skin color, and purples/blues look as vivid as they are supposed to be.
Outdoors in the shade, the light has a blueish cast (because it's being lit only by the blue sky, not by direct sun). Here, a photo of a person (caucasian, anyway) will look unusually pale, kind of a ghastly white/purple skin tone, sometimes with a reddish tone. Too much blue is muting the yellow-gold tones in the skin. Set the white balance to outdoor shade, and suddenly their natural skin colors are restored.
I did a bit of a tutorial a while ago, over at http://www.livejournal.com/users/skywind8/18455.html if you'd like some visual examples.
It looks like you mainly do outdoor photos with cloudy natural light, which is a very pure white light. So you probably haven't noticed the need for white balancing, because you're shooting with one particular type of light. If your subject matter changes (indoor parties with incandescent light but not flash, etc), you'd notice it more.
(The system is acting weird. I apologize if this posts multiple times. It doesn't seem to be going through, so I'm retrying.)
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