Hello, .
What do you know about white balance (WB)?
I'll make a guess, not much.
You probably know it's a camera setting; you may know where to find it, and you've likely kept it at the automatic factory default setting (AWB).
We don't pay much attention to it unless we accidentally and unknowingly switch it and notice something strange with the color of our pictures.
The
automatic setting will pick a WB setting for you and do its best to ensure the white you see is white in your picture. And if white remains white, all other colors appear correct or "balanced."
The WB settings represent specific color
temperatures of various transmitting light sources, described in degrees Kelvin (K).
For example, the daylight/sunlight WB icon may represent 5,500 K, while the tungsten/incandescent WB icon may represent 3,200 K.
Suppose you leave the white balance in automatic. In that case, you'll probably be happy with the colors in your pictures, but should white always be white?
The only way to answer that question is to do some exploration.
For example, during the last Introduction to Photography class meeting today, we made pictures that included something white and explored the use of white balance.
We metered the white area to a standard tone and
made a series of pictures starting with automatic white balance.
The color of the transmitting light we worked in was consistent throughout the exercise, and we kept the photograph's composition identical, including the exposure and
ISO settings.
We made a series of several pictures, and to keep it simple, we used the WB icons, starting with the highest color temperature and ending with the lowest.
The result was a series of pictures with noticeable color shifts starting from red (warm) and ending with blue (cool).
Whether the picture shifted toward red or blue or had no shift (whites appeared as white) depended on whether the white balance setting picked represented a higher, lower color, or equal temperature than the transmitting light source we were working in.
Judging by the responses of a few of the photographers in the class, they'll likely be using white balance to get intentional color shifts in their work. A change toward blue seemed the most talked about, but shifting slightly toward red (warmer) may be an excellent way to warm up a portrait or landscape. Not that shifting toward blue wouldn't work equally well in those cases;
it depends on our intent of using color creatively.
Remember, many "rules" of photography are nothing more than ideas that limit our creativity.
And that includes the idea that our white balance setting has to be "correct."
Should white be white? Sometimes yes, and sometimes no. And the only person who gets to decide that is you, the photographer making the picture.
I've got three Introduction to Photograph
classes starting this week. The one beginning on Sunday, February 11, was mistakenly marked as full, but it's not.
