by Chris d'Aquin

Created on: April 02, 2008

If you want to get the best possible color from your digital photos, it is important to understand how to use the white balance features in your camera.

You may not have thought about it, but there are different shades of light. The light from the noonday sun is different from when the sun is setting, just like a fluorescent bulb gives off a different color light than an incandescent bulb.

In film days, the vast majority of film was made for making colors look natural if the photos were taken outdoors. That's why if you used the same film indoors, it emphasized the yellow or greenish tones from indoor lighting.

To get the color indoors to look right in your prints, you needed to buy film (or use a filter on your lens) made especially for those lighting situations. But today's digital camera has those color settings built in and you can change them whenever you want.

Many photographers leave their camera in automatic white balance mode, letting the camera decide what setting to use. But you can override this and take the guesswork out of the picture.

Here is a list of the standard white balance settings, what they do, and when you should use them. Also included is what their icons will look like on your camera.

1.Sunlight - you should use this when taking photos outside, in the full sunlight, on cloudless or partly cloudy days. Its icon is a sun.

2.Cloudy - use this when you are outside on an overcast day or under heavy clouds. The light on these days is more drab and cooler (has blue tones), so this setting adds more warmth to the photo. You can also use this setting when taking portraits during midday to mimic the golden color that's present at sunset. Its icon is a cloud.

3.Open shade - this setting is useful when taking photos outside while your subject is standing in the shade and has only blue skies above. Because there is no sunlight directly shining on the subject, it will be washed with the blue light from the open sky. This setting compensates for that. Its icon is usually a simple block building with shade lines drawn on one side.

4.Fluorescent - if you don't use this setting for shooting under fluorescent lighting, your photos will likely have a greenish tone to them. Its icon is a horizontal tube with light emitting from above and below.

5.Incandescent - this is for shooting under regular, round household light bulbs, which emanate a slightly yellowish light. This setting can also be very useful when shooting Christmas lights or if your subject is under the large mercury-vapor street lights. Its icon is a round bulb.

6.Flash - this setting ensures your flash will make colors look natural. Its icon is a lightning bolt with an arrow point on the bottom.

Many cameras also allow you to manually set the white balance, but that exceeds the limits of this article. Simply put, manual white balance is where you take a photo of something white and tell the camera to make it look white. Then, as long as your photos are taken under the same conditions, they will have natural looking color.

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