I’m a new owner of a dSLR and I’m still figuring things out. For any other relative noobs who might run across this post, I wanted to illustrate the importance of the proper White Balance setting, which compensates for the variation that results from different light sources.

The images of John “Ruby Ninja” Nunemaker below were taken seconds apart. All of the settings are the same except for the White Balance setting:

The above image was set to the “incandescent.” As you can see it results in a blue cast over the whole image. I had run into the same issue a few days earlier and a friend had pointed out that my White Balance settings were the culprit. I changed the setting from “incandescent” to “direct sunshine” and took the following picture with dramatic improvement:

White balance is really easy to set (on my Nikon d40 at least). Press the info (”i”) button on the lower left of the back of the camera body twice. Scroll over to the “WB” setting and adjust as needed. There are built in settings for Incandescent, Florescent, Flash, Direct Sunlight, Cloudy, and Shade (and a Presets setting that looked too intimidating to bother with). Each setting comes with a handy preview image that allows you to gauge the kind of light you will be shooting in. 

Probably because this is so easy to set, it’s also really easy to forget when you move into different lighting conditions and start shooting otherwise well metered images. Remember to check this setting if the first couple of pics come out looking wrong.

-oAk-