White Balance-- A Lesson

Hey guy's! I'm officially starting something new today. I'm going to start posting "mini- lessons" on Photography, here on the Blog. Photography is such a widely popular hobby now-a-days, I thought it would be fun to share what I have learned. I've been doing Photography for 8 years now, whether it was learning composition from my dad, sitting in Studio Lighting classes at BYU-Idaho, or just researching on my own. No matter how long you have been in Photography, you are never done learning! So this is going to help me increase/refine my skills. All while sharing something new with you!

So my first lesson is on White Balance.

White Balance is the balance of color. Meaning, it's what determines whether your image is the same color as what you're seeing with the naked eye. Depending on which WB setting you have your camera set at, your picture will have a certain hue. The goal is to find the color that you like. Sometimes people like some yellow hue as their style. My personal style is the most exact, real life color I can get. Which is why I use a WB cap (you can buy them dirt cheap online- HERE). I'll explain more on this below, but it looks like this:
Now, to show you the different settings of WB, I took a photo and switched the WB for each. There is:
  • Custom
  • Auto
  • Cloudy
  • Daylight
  • Fluorescent & Tungsten (indoor lighting)
  • Flash, and 
  • Shade
Most of them are self explanatory.  The name is telling you which WB setting would match your scene. If you're shooting outdoors underneath a tree for instance, it recommends using the Shade setting. You get it, right? You can see their different hues below. Auto varies. It's all up to your camera. Sometimes it's perfect, sometimes it's not. My example shows it a little more blue than the SOOC (straight out of the camera) image.





Now back to the lens cap. I highly recommend getting one if you take a lot of photos. It saves me so much time in Post Editing. I don't have to fiddle as much, trying to find the perfect coloring. 

Here is how I use mine: 
  1. Switch the focus on my lens from "auto" to "manual" (this is so my camera doesn't freak out trying to focus because "something" is blocking the lens).
  2. Make sure my camera is set to Manual. Custom WB does not work in Auto.
  3. Go into my camera settings: Menu-White Balance-scroll down to Preset Manual, Measure, (it will ask    "overwrite existing preset data?" after the first time you do this), click Yes. 
  4. I set it in front of my lens/or attach it if it fits. Mine doesn't.
  5. Aim your camera either at your subject or in the direction of where you will be shooting. 
  6. Take the picture.
  7. It should say on the camera screen "Data Acquired". 

Thank guy's, for reading my first mini-lesson! It was a fun "homework" project for me. I worked on it here are there through out the week, just like homework-haha. I wanted to make sure I had all the facts perfect. I even dug out some old books and notes from college. Woo hoo!

 Any requests on my next mini-lesson? Go ahead and leave me a comment!