2.3: White balance setting

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Have you ever taken a photo indoors at night? If you have, you would get a picture similar to the one below. The background color of the photo below is yellowish because of incandescent light. You can adjust the color using the white balance setting

White balance

The color of light reflected off any object is determined by the color of the light source. Human eyes automatically adapt to the changing colors of the light source and as a result, the objects appear white regardless of whether they are in the shade, in bright sunlight, or under a florescent lamp. Digital cameras attempt to operate much in the same manner, by determining the color or the light source and processing the information from the camera’s sensor in order to correct the color information. White balance is that your camera adjusts the image captured by camera’s sensor to
compensate for the different colored light sources.

Definition of white balance

The feature of the camera that adjusts the image captured by the camera’s sensor to compensate for the different colored light sources

Automatic White balance

Digital cameras have a feature called automatic white balance (AWB) that attempts to adjust the color balance settings automatically for the color temperature of the scene being photographed. In most cases, using the AWB is your best choice. However, in some situations, AWB doesn’t correctly read the color in the scene.

White balance Setting

If you know what your light source is, you can usually set the camera to it and this may give better results. Most digital cameras have settings for sunlight, shade, electronic flash, fluorescent lighting and tungsten lighting. You can change to an appropriate white balance setting after checking a photo you took with automatic white balance setting. The options for white balance might be different depending on manufacturers. You should check your manual.

Example Icons of white balance

	a camera automatically adjusts white balance
	when taking a picture with sunlight outside
	when taking a picture under incandescent light inside
	when taking a picture under fluorescent light inside
	preset mode – you can manually change white balance