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• Auto White Balance
Auto white balance asks the camera to make the call, often
using a combination of methods to determine this. Unfortunately,
although the systems tend to be getting better about this,
they often have trouble with artificial light, particularly
down low in the incandescent range. They can also choose
a different color temperature every time you press the shutter
button, so you can have color shifting in the same set of
images. Because of this, Auto White Balance is often a choice
of last resort. |
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• White Balance Defaults
Most cameras also let you choose between Incandescent, Fluorescent,
Daylight, Flash, Cloudy, Shady or other settings that are
already built into the camera. The advantage here is that
the color temperature is fixed (perhaps 4200K for Fluorescent),
so the color won't shift. That's fine for daylight, where
often the Cloudy or Daylight setting can be a great default
for any daylight shooting. With artificial light, though,
it's probably rare that you'll be working in light that
matches that Kelvin setting exactly. That's why white balance
preset is so important. |
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• White Balance Preset
When you want to make sure that you're capturing a scene
as close to neutral as possible (No color in clean whites,
black and grays) then you need to use White Balance Preset.
Although different camera manufacturers institute this in
different ways, they all do the same thing. You tell the
camera you want to take a white balance preset reading (usually
through the menu), point the camera at a neutral target
(a photo gray card is best, but a white sheet of paper will
get you close) and then tell the camera to take a reading
of that target. It reads the color temperature of the light
striking the target and records that, which it can then
use in processing the photos taken after that. Remember,
though, that if you load a custom white balance preset into
the camera, it will apply that setting to all photos you
shoot from that point on. If you move into an area lit with
a different light source, be sure and change your white
balance settings accordingly.
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• Portrait
In this mode, the camera offers little depth of field, meaning
that the subject may be the only part of the image that's
in focus. Most portrait modes accomplish this simply by
taking the camera into an aperture-priority exposure mode
with a wide aperture. |
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• Landscape
By setting the focus to infinity, this mode prevents anything
in the foreground (including windows or tree limbs) from
confusing the focusing system. |
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• Night Portrait or Party mode
By turning on the flash but letting the shutter speed go
as low as needed for the available light, you can get a
subject that's lit by the flash as well as an exposure slow
enough to hold detail in the background. The down side is
that camera shake can still be a problem, resulting in blurry
photos.
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• Night Landscape
Turns off the flash and lets the camera shoot as slow as
needed for the available light. Also, the focus is set to
infinity (that's what "landscape" tells the camera). You're
best off using a tripod with this mode. |
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• Panorama
Helps you shoot a series of photos for a panorama by locking
the exposure for the duration of the photos to keep the
look even across the group. The other step that generally
happens here is that the camera will "ghost" an image over
the previous one to help you get the correct amount of overlap.
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• Sunset
If you choose this you're telling the camera you're shooting
a beautiful sunset. It then will choose a warm white balance
setting to keep those pretty colors, and perhaps add a bit
of saturation as well.
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Top
If a subject is in good light, but that
light's to the side or from behind, then the shadows in
the person's face can be too dark.
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Top
Turning the flash on in that case will
add what's called "fill" flash, as it helps fill-in the
shadows, and make for a better photo. Lastly, if your camera
offers the control to adjust the amount of flash, you may
find that turning it down a bit (minus 1/2 to 1 stop) gives
a more pleasing look.
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Digital
Cameras
Camera
Features
Photo
Techniques
Computers
Downloading
Back
Up
Color
Management
Image
Browsers
Editing
Printing/E-mail
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Cameras, whether film or digital, don't know what color
temperature the light is that you're photographing in. With
film cameras, a photographer had to choose the right film
type (Daylight or Tungsten) and then filter the lenses and
gel the strobes to correct for anything else. With digital
this has become much easier, as you can simply tell the
camera what kind of light you're working in. It will then
apply that color correction to the processing of the images
as you shoot them. The advantage is that you can change
the color balance for each situation you encounter without
having to change film or filters. The down side is that
you need to figure out what that color temperature is. Almost
all digital cameras (from compact to pro) have three ways
of dealing with this: 
