Beginning in Photography - White Balance

Ever wonder why some photos have a yellow or blue color to throw? Why is this happening? Well, it has to do with how your camera sees colors in a scene. Correct white balance is one of the technical aspects of photography, which are often overlooked or not understood. But it can have a major impact on your photos, so it is important to understand how color works in photography.

What is White Balance?

The color is in the temperature, measured in units of Kelvin. Warm colors havea low degree Kelvin, while cooler temperatures have a higher degree Kelvin. For example, the flame of a candle a Kelvin temperature of about 1500, while Kelvin is a blue sky a temperature of about 9000th The human eye is very good at adjusting for differences in color temperature. Unless the temperature of the light is very extreme a white wall will look white in the rule. But a camera does not have a human brain behind it (yet anyway!) And is therefore not possible to make the same changes. TheResult is a color looks either too "cold" or "warm."

Setting the White Balance

The purpose of adjusting the white balance is the camera say either warm up or cool things, depending on the lighting situation. How can we do? Most digital cameras have automatic and semi-automatic settings. Most frequently, these are:

Automatic: if your camera takes a guess at the correct white balance. In most conditions, this is fairly accurate, but in difficult lighting conditions, situations, it is easily fooled.

Tungsten: For shooting under tungsten (used artificial) lighting, such as an indoor light bulb. Since this type of lighting is very warm, cool the discontinuation of the colors easily.

Daylight: used for shooting outside. Colors may appear under a sky all blue so this setting is used to warm up a scene.

Different brands of cameras also have more variations on these settings, such as cloudy conditions and Flash> Photography.

Manually setting the white balance

In most cases, the use of automatic or semi-automatic settings on your camera will produce good results. But if there are just not doing it for you, or like me, are you a complete control freak who can most digital cameras you can manually adjust the white balance.

This can be done in two ways. Some cameras have a setting that will allow you to set the white balance in degrees Kelvin. To do this, of course, you need to knowTemperature of your light. This is easy to find, with a few test shots. For example, when shooting indoors under a standard home world, you know that the temperature of the light will be quite low. Adjust the setting to a small number, and take a test shot. Then review and make any necessary adjustments until the color looks good in your pictures.

The second method is the tried and true gray card. By holding a neutral color in front of your lens, you are saying basically the Camera that looks white. It will then adjust all other colors accordingly. You must have your white balance setting to manual.

With all the automatic settings that have digital cameras, ostensibly to make our lives easier, it's just too lazy and let the camera do all the work. However, put him in a little extra effort into learning why things the way they work properly the next time you are dealing with a difficult lighting situation, and helps you improve about your> Photography.