White Balance Settings

White balance settings are used to compensate for various types of lighting conditions you photograph in. Your brain naturally compensates for the various casts of colors certain types of light give off, but cameras don't.

Let's look at the different white balance modes and how they effect an image.

I've decided to use two pictures as examples. One picture was taken outside and the other inside. This way you can get a better idea of how changing the white balance can change the color in the photograph in various situations.

Tungsten

Daylight

Inside Shade

Cloudy

Fluorescent

Daylight

Shade

Cloudy

Fluorescent

Tungsten

In the pictures above the first picture in each series is the one I chose to use. Now that we see a visual example let's look at the settings more closely.

Daylight: This mode is usually displayed on your menu as a picture of the sun. It is an unfiltered setting. This is the standard setting used for outdoor shots.

Shade: Usually displayed on your menu as a sun partially obstructed by clouds. This mode reduces strong blue tints in your photos. It also makes for vivid sunset and sunrise photos.

Cloudy: This mode is usually displayed on your menu as a picture of clouds. This setting reduces the intensity of blue tints in the picture, but it isn't as strong as the shade setting. If you use this mode on days that aren't cloudy, it can make the image look brighter.

Tungsten (Incandescent): Shown as a picture of an ordinary light bulb. This setting adds more blue to the image to offset the strong orange color associated with tungsten light.

Fluorescent: Shown as a fluorescent tube on your menu. Fluorescent light gives off a greenish tint. This setting adds blue and magenta to the picture to offset the green.

Custom: This is the mode that you can set yourself. Depending on the type of camera you have, you'll have to do your custom setting differently. Read your camera's manual to find out how to do it for your camera. This is usually the most accurate of the white balance modes.

Auto: When set on the auto setting your camera evaluates the lighting and uses the setting it determines is best. This setting is convenient because it requires no though from you, but it doesn't always give you the best results.

Setting your camera on auto is the easy solution. I'm sure it's used by most people, but our goal is to have absolute control over the look of our pictures. Letting your camera choose the settings gives your camera the control not you. What if your camera makes an inappropriate choice? That's why I think it's worth it to learn your setting options and then try them out.

Once you get to know these settings better you can experiment with changing the look of a picture by changing the white balance. Sometimes using a white balance that's not exactly right for the situation. For example, before I took this picture I forgot to change the white balance setting.

After I took the picture I liked the coolness of the light from having it on the tungsten setting so I decided not to take it again or even fix it in my editing software. This was a happy little accident. Now that I know what the result is I'll remember it so I can use it in the future if I want to take a picture with a similar feel.

I hope this page helped you understand white balance settings a bit better.

To find out more about digital camera settings check out more digital photography basics.