Setting your White Balance Manually

Get better digital photos by going into your manual settings and finding the MANUAL White Balance Preset, and setting up a custom WB by making a measurement off of something white. Here's an example from my Nikon Coolpix 995

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• camera
• expert
• adjustment
• white
• balance
• digital
• artwork
• photography
• coolpix

[bambizzoozled]

So, I don't use a gray card? I use a white card?

[drdarrow]

@bambizzoozled yes... sort of. Since you are setting white balance (adjusting for any color cast the available light might have) a gray card will work fine, but since some people (many? most?) cannot tell if the gray is warm or cool or neutral, it's just easier to use something white.

I recommend a white tee-shirt, a handkerchief or other white cloth over using a white piece of paper or envelope.

[drdarrow]

@bambizzoozled Why? Paper manufacturers add phosphorous material to paper products to give an illusion of greater brightness. These phosphors actually glow a bit on the blue side -- you may not see it but your camera will. Phosphors have a property about them that causes them to glow or emit light when they get "excited" by light hitting them. An old (but white) shirt or hanky will have long ago had any such thing washed out.

[drdarrow]

@bambizzoozled A gray card for photography was used for measuring the relative brightness of a scene by reflecting toward the meter (often in the lens) "an average" amount of light. A 50% gray card (halfway between light/white and dark/black was said to have an 18% reflectancy, and camera meters were "set" to expect 18% reflectancy as indicative of an excellent exposure.

While a neutral/middle gray can be used for setting the WB, it's not necessary. The color of light is what's being measured.

[drdarrow]

My particular model is a fairly sophisticated (for its time) Nikon Coolpix 995 -- it's point and shoot, but had a lot of higher end features. I still get great pictures from it, and it's the only digital camera I own.

Setting the white balance this way is the best way to get reliable color from just about any digital camera that has MANUAL white balance settings. And almost all cameras do.

[maltijien]

thats cool.

so you can measure even colour temperature with the camera.

great,whats your baby? Canon EOS?

[cybercab]

Great job. This was helpful.