# White Balance



## Elf Mommy (Mar 4, 2010)

What is it? 

When should I use it?


Everything is on auto right now, so I'd love to learn more!


----------



## Pet_Bunny (Mar 4, 2010)

White Balance is basically the color temperature from a light source that affects the colors in your pictures. Some pictures look bluer than normalbecause is it cooler in color temperature and other pictures look redder because it is warmer in color. You try to make the whites look white.

Minda, your Nikon D300 with the *A* (Auto) setting does very well in most situations. It is only in extreme lighting conditions when you need to make some adjustments.


http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/white-balance.htm

http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/whitebalance.htm


----------



## MikeScone (Mar 6, 2010)

*Elf Mommy wrote: *


> What is it?


White things aren't white, they just reflect all the light that shines on them. If the light is white - that is, it's a mix of equal amounts of all colors of light - then a white object is white. If the light is not quite white - say, if it's mostly orange - then the "white" thing reflects not-quite-white light, so it's really sort of orange. As Stan said, this color shift is called "color temperature" - redder light is warmer, bluer light is cooler. 

So, why do we care? Sunlight's white, and we use white light bulbs indoors, right? Wrong. Regular tungsten light bulbs aren't white, they're more or less orange - if the bulb is on a dimmer, the dimmer it's set the redder the light. Mercury vapor lights, which are commonly used in industrial settings like gyms and exhibit bulidings (i.e. where you have rabbit shows) are blue-green. Flourescent bulbs are all over the map - mostly greenish. 

The human brain is really amazing - when you know something is white, it looks white to you. So, that white thing under orange light looks white to you because you know it's white. To a camera, though, it looks as it really is - orange - and without some sort of compensation, any picture you took under that light would appear to have an orange cast. 

For example, look at this grey bunny saltshaker:






That's pretty much what he looks like to me, wherever he may be in my house. However, look at him under tungsten flood lights: 





On my kitchen counter, under one kind of fluorescent lights:





In the dining room, under a different set of fluorescent bulbs:





Note that I had to fool the D300 by telling it that I was in daylight to get these examples. The D300 (and most digital cameras) has the ability to adjust the picture as you take it to try to balance out these color casts and make whites white (hence, "white balance"). The camera does a really good job in automatic white balance mode (WB="Auto") under most circumstances. 

You can manually set the white balance to various presets (daylight, flash, tungsten, or flourescent), or adjust the color manually by setting a color temperature number (the lower the number, the bluer the picture) by holding the WB button and moving the rear thumb dial to select the symbol for the kind of light. Or, you can choose "Pre" and actually set white to be white under whatever peculiar light you're in. 

Most of the time, though, I just stick with Auto WB. If you find pictures are consistently too cool (i.e. bluish), you can push WB and use the front dial to add some amber (+a), or if they're too warm (i.e. orangy), dial in some blue (+b). Try it out and see what you like.


----------

