White balance has long been a problem that photographers have had to overcome. In the days of film cameras light was ‘normalized’ using filters to overcome the hues of tungsten or fluorescent lighting. Nowadays in the world of digital photography we do not need filters, we can simply change the white balance settings of our cameras ideally before we take a shot or possibly during post processing on a computer.
What is White balance?
The issues surrounding white balance are all to do with colour temperature. Every light source emits a different colour temperature of light. For example a fluorescent tube light emits a light at the blue end of the spectrum (high colour temperature) whereas a regular tungsten bulb emits more of a yellow/orange hue of light (lower temperature).
If you look around you know you will notice that there are an almost infinite number of shades of white. White objects around you can look distinctly blue, gray, yellow, red etc depending on the type of light they receive. When we view them our brains can interpret these different shades as ‘plain white’
Our challenge as photographer is to remove or nullify this imbalance of the white balance before the image is recorded by the camera. As mentioned above, on film cameras this was historically done using filters. In digital slrs we do this by changing our white balance settings. We’ll discuss below the different approaches you can take to do this.
1. Use the Auto White Balance Feature
All digital cameras come with some sort of auto white balance (AWB) feature or setting. In this mode you camera (or more specifically the software inside your camera) will attempt to assess the current lighting conditions it is in and set the white balance appropriately. Some cameras will do this better than others, there I no hard and fast rule. Generally you should get fairly decent results, especially if you are shooting outside in sunny conditions or indoors under tungsten light.
2. Use a Preset White balance Mode
Virtually all digital cameras have a number of preset white balance modes that are pre configured for the most common types of light encountered. Typical settings are; tungsten (regular indoor lights), fluorescent (indoor tube lights), sunny, shade, cloudy and snow.
Using these preset modes is a good halfway house between shooting in AWB and manual mode. If you want to shoot quickly and you are indoors under normal incandescent lights then simply switch to tungsten mode. These presets will generally produce more accurate images than AWB mode however you still may find your images do not look right, after all these presets are based on average lighting conditions.
Of course you may not always want to reproduce exactly what you see through the viewfinder. By purposefully using the wrong white balance settings you can achieve some very pleasing results. In the example below we selected the wrong setting on purpose so that the image had a very cold sterile feeling.
Using the ‘wrong’ setting can produce pleasing results like the shot above where we let the wite balance be way too cold.
3. Use the Custom White Balance Feature
The most accurate way to solve the white balance problem is to use the custom feature. To do this you need to tell your camera what white (or gray) looks like in your current light conditions.
When setting the custom white balance your camera will need you to take a picture with something white or grey (18% grey to be precise, this shade of gray or white reflects all colors naturally) in the center. From this picture the camera will then calculate the correct colour temperatures to use.
One handy thing to add to your camera bag is a gray white balance card which can be used to set the WB, even when there are no white walls or objects around for you to use.
Below are instructions to do this on a Canon DSLR, other types of camera will be fairly similar:
i. Select the custom white balance by pressing the “WB” button on the back of the camera next to the LCD then pressing the <> keys to select Custom White Balance, then press “Set”.
ii. Photograph a white object under similar light conditions that you want to shoot. Ensure the areas immediately surrounding the centre focus point is white.
iii. Press the menu button and scroll along to the second tab, then scroll down to Custom WB and press “Set”
iv. You now need to select the picture you took in step 2 above. Scroll left or right until you find the picture then press “Set”
v A dialogue will appear asking for confirmation to import data, select “OK”. Press “Menu” to exit the menu.
vi. Ensure you have selecting the Custom White balance by repeating step 1 above.
vii. Shoot away. You should now find your shots have a more natural looking colors.
4. Adjusting White Balance After Taking the Shot
If you are shooting your photographs in RAW format you will be able to adjust your White Balance settings during your image processing in your RAW editing software. Most software applications such as Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop CS4, Canon’s DPP and Capture One enable you to select either one of the presets you see on the camera or to adjust the temperature manually.
The benefit of adjusting during your image post production is that you can easily play around with the settings. Sometimes you can add mood to an image by having the colour temperatures set too high or low (depending on your photographs content).
As a rule you should aim to always get the settings correct on your camera prior to taking a shot however sometimes time simply won’t allow this. Shooting in RAW format gives you the flexibility to correct such settings when you get back home after a shoot.
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