WHITE BALANCE

White balance is the name given to a digital camera's system for dealing with different lighting conditions when making color corrections. Normally our eyes compensate for different lighting conditions, making a white paper look white under any lighting conditons. Digital cameras try to use a white point in the photo to determine the best white balance setting which will make the white point appear white. Most cameras feature automatic white balance which enables the camera to look at the overall color of the image and calculate the best white balance. These systems are often fooled under certain lighting and color conditons. Most digicams allow you to override the automatic white balance by choosing a preset white balance manually. The most common presets are sunlight, cloudy, fluorescent, and tungsten (same thing as incandescent). These presets can be chosen through a white balance button on the outside of the camera (advanced models) or through the menu system. The symbols are sun for sunny, cloud for cloudy, light bulb with rays for tungsten/incandescent, and long bulb with rays for flourescent.

Full-featured digital cameras also allow manual, user-defined white balance preset which simply means measuring the white point from a white sheet of paper or gray card which you hold in front of the lens, then pressing a button which allows the camera to record the color temperature and use it to correct all images until you reset it. This is the most accurate method for getting correct white balance.

Some cameras have better white balance systems than others, and you are indeed lucky if your camera is one of those models. Most cameras don't have any problems with white balance outdoors in sunlight or even on cloudy days. Using the cloudy preset often adds a little warmth to the image. Sometimes problems arise indoors under artificial light. Experiment with the auto and preset white balance settings and see which works best with your camera in various lighting conditions.