How to use white balance: Adjustning white balance
White balance is also know as color temperature. To simplify it, the higher the temperature your picture tends to be warm (reddish) and the lower it is the cooler it gets (blueish). So if you wonder why your picture is too orange when you shoot in a room full of tungsten light or maybe a little greenish under florescent light.. that’s white balance. White balance problem often happens when you shoot indoors or under fluorescent (like I mentioned earlier) or with just your average light bulb. Check your camera settings to see which setting are you on. By default your camera is set to the auto. There are a lot of presets for the different types of light source available but most camera comes with the custom balance and/or you can adjust the temperature yourself (kelvin). So which one is the right temperature? Well to give you an idea or guide here’s chart
1,700 K Match flame
1,850 K Candle flame
2,700–3,300 K Incandescent light bulb
3,350 K Studio “CP” light
3,400 K Studio lamps, photofloods, etc.
4,100 K Moonlight, xenon arc lamp
5,000 K Horizon daylight
5,500–6,000 K Typical daylight, electronic flash
6,500 K Daylight, overcast
9,300 K CRT screen
*chart is from wikipedia
The K stands for kelvin. Most DSLR can have the option to adjust the color temperature yourself if you don’t want the camera to set it. That’s one ways of eliminating the problem of white balance.
Another thing they use to correct this problem (cutting the guess work) is by using a Grey card. You see everything your camera sees, the camera tries to set it to an 18% neutral color (in Auto mode) but well this might work most of the times but sometimes it can be fooled, like when you shoot in show the picture might come out kinda greyish. no one or nothing is perfect anyways.. By using the custom white balance setting (see your manual) and the Grey card you can set the color at 18% Grey which it should be, the “true” colors.
Another way of correcting is by shooting RAW (see your camera manual). With RAW the camera captures all the detail and preserved it unlike jpeg, where it is processed. You can manually set the white balance after.
White balance can be subjective because people can use this to change or enhance the feeling of your picture. So go ahead an play with your white balance setting. See how the settings affect the output of your image. And play with the feeling of the picture.
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[...] #10 light has color – this is where color temperature comes in white balance. [...]