Adjusting White Balance Presets
Most digital cameras let you choose from a small collection of white balance presets. In addition to automatic white balance selection, your camera probably includes white balance settings for conditions like incandescent lights, fluorescent lights, an external flash unit, and cloudy or overcast days.
A. Choosing a White Balance Preset
Changing your white balance setting varies from camera to camera, but the process is typically fairly simple. For the specifics on your camera model, check your camera’s user guide. In general though, this is the process:
Turn your camera on and set it to its normal record mode. If your camera has a separate record mode specifically for manual photography, you’ll probably need this one instead.Press the menu button on your camera so that you see a set of menus in the LCD display. Find the option for white balance.
Scroll through the white balance options until you find the lighting condition that best represents your scene.
Press menu again to turn off the menus. You can now take your picture.
B. Measuring White Balance Yourself
Sometimes these white balance presets just don’t get the job done. If you are in a tricky lighting situation, such as a room that has both incandescent light and candlelight, you may need to set the white balance manually based on the actual lighting conditions in the room.
One of the hardest lighting situations on planet earth is a school gymnasium. Because of the way gyms are lit, no white balance preset ever seems to work properly. For best results—and to avoid the inevitable yellow cast in your photos—try to arrive early and manually set the white balance with the help of a white or gray card.
This may sound complicated, but it’s really not that hard. Before you start, you’ll simply need one additional item: a white surface that the camera can use to set the white balance. Typically, you can get by with a small square of white poster board or typing paper. For better and more consistent results, though, I recommend that you purchase an 18% gray card from your local photo shop. Professional photographers use these small gray cards to judge exposure all the time, since the exposure meters in most cameras assume that images average out to about 18 percent gray overall. You can get a gray card for just a few dollars, and you’ll be surprised at how handy it is for setting white balance.
To set the white balance yourself, follow these steps:
- Ask your subject or an assistant to hold the gray card with the gray side facing you. Make sure the card is where you’re actually going to take the picture, so you are measuring the actual light as it will be in your scene.
- Turn on your camera and set it to the record mode.
- Activate the menu system on your LCD display.
- Find the white balance controls in the menu system.
- Scroll through the white balance until you find the option to record it yourself. Select this option.
- You should now see something on the LCD display directing you to photograph a white object. Compose your scene so that the gray card—or whatever you are using to set the white balance—fills the frame.
- Take the picture and exit the menu system.
The camera will now expose any pictures you take using this new white balance value. Be sure to reset the white balance back to automatic when you’re done taking these pictures; otherwise, you may try taking pictures a day or two later in very different lighting conditions and get bizarre results because the white balance is completely askew.
Many cameras set white balance in the way described earlier, but your camera may do it slightly differently. Refer to your camera’s user manual for exact details.
