White balance help

[Kb_bigdog]

Hi All,
Just got my 20d weeks ago, and am trying to understand all the features of the digital world. I realize to get the optimum picture quality I need to adjust the white balance on my camera.(Plus many other things):) .Any quick and easy advice for doing that?

[jimsolt]

Hi All,
Just got my 20d weeks ago, and am trying to understand all the features of the digital world. I realize to get the optimum picture quality I need to adjust the white balance on my camera.(Plus many other things):) .Any quick and easy advice for doing that?
Read your manual and figure out what white balance is and does. White balance tells your camera the color of the light falling on what you are photographing. When it knows that, the camera will produce pretty close to the same colors you see when you look at the scene with your wonderful human eyes that do all this stuff automatically.
Your camera has several white balance choices. First, there is "automatic". It works very well most of the time. Then there are choices for various kinds of light you might be shooting in. Daylight, Cloudy, Incandescent (household lamps), flourescent, etc. If those lights supply the predominate light, use one of those settings, though automatic might work also.
When you get to "custom", come back and ask the question. You will then know more about the variations possible.
Shoot lots of pictures in varying light conditions and see the results. One picture equals a thousand posts in this forum.
It isn't as complicated as it sounds.
Jim

[weemannie]

If you want to see the effect of the different wb setting, shoot in RAW format. Then, using your RAW conversion software, experiment with the settings to see how the images look, and pick your favourite. :)

[tim]

Even better, take a photo of a scene with a lot of white in it using JPG on each of the white ballance settings. The teacher of my basic class made us all do that, it was quite educational. Forget about RAW for now, until you understand it JPG is fine. When you want to understand it, read this book (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/032127878X/qid=1113466778/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_xs_ap_i1_xgl14/002-3047575-5896047?v=glance&s=books&n=507846) (or maybe there's a CS2 book out now).