Hi guys.

I just feel that I am going through this new step of using Canon EOS 1100D DSLR recently! I had it since on 29th of January earlier this year and it about half of year already and I am learning this very well.

Now what I have realised that, the white balance setting contributes to the light spectrum in your environment externally of the digital camera. So, if it cloudy day.......it best to use cloudy setting on the camera? If sunny clear blue skies, change it to daylight setting....and vice versa for other settings.

Am I going through this right way? Hope so!

PS: I just noticed that there a massive difference between tungsten and daylight white balance for indoor photography during the night. I believe tungsten setting by my eyes appears much clearer and perfect picture than daylight setting.

I set the white balance to auto, it does a decent job in most cases. If the white balance is a bit off or you wish to alter the white balance for effect then this can easily be done in camera raw (adobe) if shooting in raw format.

If you want to be really accurate I believe you can even use grey cards to help set the correct white balance.

Hope that helps, though I am sure there are plenty of ways to skin a cat.

I always shoot with my white balance on Manual. I Never have it on auto. As soon as the light is cold (cloudy or shaded) I tend to go for The cloudy day w/b to warm the photo and not have it blueish.

Indoors I take a test shot to find the nearest setting to how I want it. Keep fiddling with it MT - I think it's worth being aware of.

Of course on better cameras Auto white balance USUALLY works ok but when that unusual light or colour dominance occurs - auto can rob you of the correct colour.

Get things as good as possible in camera to avoid the need to fiddle on the computer - that's my philosophy as an old school film person.

I tend to shoot auto wb during daylight hours and 95% of the time its within 200k of the correct wb. At night tungsten seems to work well for night skies, a bit of fiddling is required when shooting nightime city scapes. Realistically though, it's much easier to adjust in post processing (raw) i believe, than to sit fiddling through the white balance presets, especially since theres a significant gap between their kelvin values anyway. Adobe photoshop has a tool i believe that can suggest whether the white balance is correct, although im unsure of it at the moment. It will literally add a maximum of minutes (if that) to adjust it correctly post processing so time isn't really an issue. Ofc post processing wont fix everything, as DaveM said its better to get it right in camera, however I don't believe wb falls into this category, moreso exposure, composition and such things like that. If your a jpeg shooter, you'll just have to deal with the limitations.

WB means nothing when shooting RAW and can be delt with during post processing. Only thing that matters shooting RAW is Exposure, Aperture, and ISO.

Yes Mathew you have the general idea, but you can get away with shooting in Cloudy most of the time, cloudy tends to bring some warmth to shots.

Thanks guys for your advices!

I totally knew that cloudy setting does work very well in cloudy environment or shade. Gotta love my Canon EOS 1100D. It best digital camera ever released! I tried auto balance before but the picture looks rather distorted or faded in wrong colour which I didn't like the looks of it.

I used this white balance setting to custom. It appears much better than cloudy or daylight settings. This is interesting!

Employing the natural and inherent characteristics of light, to enhance a photographic image, is the real skill of photography.

The different colour temperatures of natural light, of artificial lighting and encountering mixed lighting can be both difficult and interesting. Over a wide range of energy distributions (both for the spectrum and intensity of those light sources) much of the changes are not perceived by the eye unlike the camera's objectivity. Knowing what to expect comes with experience.

When shooting from inside a building that might have both fluorescent and tungsten lighting and pointing the camera into daylight at the same time, one needs determine, which of the light sources is given priority or corrected initially or changed in the post processing.

Three light sources in one, the photo below. Fluoros on the ceiling, tungsten spots on the wall hangings and daylight streaming in. The colours were corrected in post processing.




I embrace the found colour temperatures, almost always to try to enhance colour, rather than correct them. Skin tones benefit from looking normal and correct most times of course.

Shooting RAW is exciting, especially when using mixed lighting or when the colour reflectance of an object is not the same as the colour acceptance of the camera's sensor. This can be both confronting at times, but not ever disappointing, I find. When you look at a white object it isn't actually white. The colour of the light and the colours of the reflections and the different colour temperatures from shadows and modelling all contribute to make up the white and the subtle variations within white.

Times when priority is given to one light source's temperature (over another).

Daylight had priority.




The moonlight from a Supermoon had priority.




Candlelight inside the hut was given priority for its richness of colour in this exposure. The hut exterior was lit with moonlight.




I only set the white balance to approximate noon daylight, for all conditions, so that the inherent colour temperature of the light is the feature.





Warren.