Importance of White Balance

Lets start things off with a nice picture of the river then we will get in to some interesting things of an educational nature and end with fun images again.

In most of the more simple cameras available, and the dSLRs available when shot in auto mode, one thing that never comes to mind is the importance of white balance. But if you move over to shoot manually, or for some reason your pictures just don't look right, you will need to set your white balance your self. Now when I say this, I mean to one of the programed preset white balanced settings because I have not as of yet figured out how to manually set the white balance otherwise. When I was in broadcasting I could do it on the TV production cameras with ease. This chart is a list of the pre-programed setting's symbols and what they stand for.

I have found selecting the correct preset works just fine. On the 2 images below you will see one that is taken with the white balance set to indoor tungsten light. This is standard indoor lights, nothing fancy or special. You will notice how the picture has a blue tinge to it. The 2nd picture is set with the correct setting of cloudy, as the sky today was indeed cloudy, giving the picture better and more realistic colors.

The color change in the picture has to do with light temperature and how the camera reads the light and focuses the different light waves. We could go on about this for a long time.

Here is a few more pictures from along the Gallatin River today for your enjoyment.

So grab your camera, make sure your white balance is correct, and take those pictures.
If you have ideas or suggestions of topics or things you would like to see please leave them in the comments and I'll see what I can do to work some in over time.