Welcome to the first part of many articles about how to take an awesome photo.
The best place to start is getting the colours right. And to get the colours right we need to know about white balance.
A lot digital camera owners don’t understand/ don’t care/ don’t use a very important aspect of photography which is white balance. This is something that is worth learning as it has a big impact on the photos that you take with your camera.
The crux of white balance is this: when white balance is adjusted properly it will show the colours as accurately as possible.
So now the million dollar question – what is white balance? It all comes down to colour temperature. This is a way of measuring the quality of the light source. It is based on the ratio of amount of blue light to the amount of red light, while the green light is ignored. The unit for measuring this ratio is Kelvin (K). The higher the colour temperature value, the cooler the light as it has more blue light in ratio to red. The lower the colour temperature value, the warmer the light as it has more red in ratio to blue.
A Kelvin huh? What’s that? Good question 
It started when a British physicist William Kelvin heated a block of carbon. As it heated up the carbon glowed, producing a range of different colours at different temperatures. It first produced a dim red light, then increased to a brighter yellow as the temperature rose, to eventually producing a bright blue white glow at its highest temperature. The unit Kelvin is a variation Centigrade degrees. The Kelvin scale starts at absolute zero which is -273 centigrade. So basically you subtract 273 from a Kelvin temperature to get the centigrade. Although the colour temperature is referenced to the different types of lights that correspond to the visible colour matching a standard black body not the temperature that the filament burns.
The following table shows the correlated colour temperature of common light sources:
| Color Temperature | Light Source |
| 1000-2000 K | Candlelight |
| 2500-3500 K | Tungsten Bulb (household variety) |
| 3000-4000 K | Sunrise/Sunset (clear sky) |
| 4000-5000 K | Fluorescent Lamps |
| 5000-5500 K | Electronic Flash |
| 5000-6500 K | Daylight with Clear Sky (sun overhead) |
| 6500-8000 K | Moderately Overcast Sky |
| 9000-10000 K | Shade or Heavily Overcast Sky |
Note that Kelvin values listed in the table are approximate rather than exact. You need to keep in mind that a new light bulb and new flash have higher color temperature than their old and used equivalents, and an electronic flash is designed to have a color temperature comparable to that of average sunlight.
Preset White Balance Settings
Here are some of the basic White Balance settings you’ll find on cameras:
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Auto – This is when the camera decides what is best for the photo. It was a bit hit and miss in the earlier digital models, but the newer ones are a great deal more accurate. Don’t limit yourself to this setting though, especially when you can create wonderful images by tweaking the white balance.
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Tungsten – this mode counteracts the warmth of tungsten lighting and brings the white balance up to cool the image. It is symbolised by a little bulb.
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Fluorescent – this compensates for the ‘cool’ light of fluorescent light and will warm up your shots.
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Daylight/Sunny – this is the average white balance.
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Cloudy – this setting warms the photo a touch to compensate for clouds.
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Flash – camera flash can be quite blue, so this setting warms up the image.
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Shade – the light in shade is generally cooler (bluer) than shooting in direct sunlight so this mode will warm things up a little.
TIP: use the shade setting when taking photos in the forest. It will give you warm accurate colours!
Setting your own white balance
To set the white balance manually all you need is a gray card. Why a gray card? Because 18% gray reflects all the colours of the spectrum equally.
Once you have taken the image, most cameras have a menu option that will allow you to bring up the image and set it as the custom white balance, then instruct you to change the preset to the proper white balance setting. This can also be used when taking a series of shots then adjusting the white balance in photoshop or camera raw or lightroom using the gray point eye dropper.
You must have the gray card in the frame with the subject, as there is not point in having the card in your hand as the white balance setting will be different from where the subject is.
The added bonus to doing a custom white balance, resulting in more neutral and natural colors is the total decrease in post production work you’ll have adjusting for improper white balance settings.
So there you have it people – An explanation on white balance. Stay tuned for the next article in this series!
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Sasha has been a photoshop nerd and photographer for over 10 years now. She loves to share information and make the world a more colourful place, perhaps a little photoshop enhanced.