3: White Balance

Our eyes are very good at adjusting to different types of light. When we are inside objects that we see are most often lit by tungsten or florescent light and when were are outside everything is illuminated by natural sunlight. Our eyes adjust to these different lighting conditions and are able to keep the colors that we see true. In other words our eyes see white as white in different lighting situations. Digital cameras need a little help with the different lights in order to keep the colors true. This is where the white balance setting comes in.

Most DSLR's have preset white balance (WB) settings such as auto, tungsten, florescent, sunny, or cloudy. In addition to these settings, most newer DSLR's enable the photographer to manually ajust the WB using a white piece of paper during the shoot to tell the camera what white should look like under the specific lighting conditions. Mr. Peterson says that he almost always puts his camera in the cloudy WB setting. WB can also be adjusted after on your computer using a program like Adobe Lightroom.

Tonight we put together a little photo shoot in our home with the kids. Here is what we came up with.

I left this photo's WB alone in Lightroom. This is the result of my camera's auto WB setting.

This one was adjusted with Lightroom's auto WB setting.














I had a hard time deciding which one is more correct but I decided that I like the top one a bit more due to the warmth the photo has. Which one do you think looks better? Be honest! I have stared at both of these for so long I think my judgment could be off. Here is one of B cub #2 with the warmer WB.