Dark Photography School

White balance is an application of color temperature to give your camera knowledge of the environment. With this information, it can take a picture that more accurately represents what the eye sees. It also enables you to creatively alter the subject of the photo. Most digital SLRs allow you to:

• select from a set of presets
• shoot an object to serve as the base white
• specify a manual color temperature in Kelvin

The preset options

These are the options that are included on the camera I use, a Canon EOS 10D.

Auto  

The white balance is set by the camera

Sun  

For brightly lit sunny scenes outside

Shade  

For areas outside in the shade

Tungsten  

For the familiar filament type (incandescent) light bulb

Fluorescent  

For use in fluorescent lighting

Flash  

For use when flash is fired

Custom  

Shoot a custom object to set the white point

Manual  

Use a manual color temperature set in degrees Kelvin

Two examples shot in different modes

This image was taken using Average White Balance (AWB)

And this image was taken using a custom white point

We’ll explore the other presets as well as the custom and manual settings in a later lesson.