Recently, I spoke with a friend wanting to learn more about her camera so she could feel comfortable with getting out there and using it for once. One of the things she inquired about was the Auto Settings on the camera. I have first decided to tackle this by borrowing a post from The Digital Photography School blog about white balance (“Introduction to White Balance”). If you’ve ever held a point and shoot, you notice the settings on white balance that you can switch to. A lot of people just use them to shoot in B&W, or because the setting indicates the weather they are in – Cloudy, Sunny – without quite knowing what the settings do. So below you will see a quick explanation of white balance and how those Auto Settings relate.
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White Balance is an aspect of photography that many digital camera owners don’t understand or use – but it’s something well worth learning about as it can have a real impact upon the shots you take.
So for those of you who have been avoiding White Balance – let me introduce you to it. I promise to keep it as simple as possible and keep what follows as useable as I can:
At its simplest – the reason we adjust white balance is to get the colors in your images as accurate as possible.
Why would you need to get the color right in your shots?
You might have noticed when examining shots after taking them that at times images can come out with an orange, blue, yellow etc look to them – despite the fact that to the naked eye the scene looked quite normal. The reason for this is that images different sources of light have a different ‘color’ (or temperature) to them. Fluorescent lighting adds a bluish cast to photos whereas tungsten (incandescent/bulbs) lights add a yellowish tinge to photos.
The range in different temperatures ranges from the very cool light of blue sky through to the very warm light of a candle.
We don’t generally notice this difference in temperature because our eyes adjust automatically for it. So unless the temperature of the light is very extreme a white sheet of paper will generally look white to us. However a digital camera doesn’t have the smarts to make these adjustments automatically and sometimes will need us to tell it how to treat different light.
So for cooler (blue or green) light you’ll tell the camera to warm things up and in warm light you’ll tell it to cool down.
Adjusting White Balance
Different digital cameras have different ways of adjusting white balance so ultimately you’ll need to get out your camera’s manual out to work out the specifics of how to make changes. Having said this – many digital cameras have automatic and semi-automatic modes to help you make the adjustments.
Preset White Balance Settings
Here are some of the basic White Balance settings you’ll find on cameras:
* Auto – this is where the camera makes a best guess on a shot by shot basis. You’ll find it works in many situations but it’s worth venturing out of it for trickier lighting.
* Tungsten – this mode is usually symbolized with a little bulb and is for shooting indoors, especially under tungsten (incandescent) lighting (such as bulb lighting). It generally cools down the colors in photos.
* Fluorescent – this compensates for the ‘cool’ light of fluorescent light and will warm up your shots.
* Daylight/Sunny – not all cameras have this setting because it sets things as fairly ‘normal’ white balance settings.
* Cloudy - this setting generally warms things up a touch more than ‘daylight’ mode.
* Flash - the flash of a camera can be quite a cool light so in Flash WB mode you’ll find it warms up your shots a touch.
* Shade – the light in shade is generally cooler (bluer) than shooting in direct sunlight so this mode will warm things up a little.
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There is more to article, but click the link above to access it. The rest covers manual white balancing, which is beyond the scope of what I wanted to discuss today. I hope this article will give you a basic understanding for next time you decide to switch settings in order to take a picture.
Okay, so I also promised to explain more of the settings on the dial so let’s go. I borrowed a picture (so I didn’t have to) of the top of a Canon Powershot A80 (my first digital camera) and I will use it to explain some things.
Let’s first start by looking at the settings above Auto (green), they are all denoted by letters.
P – Program Auto Exposure: This setting will take care of your exposure settings like aperture, shutter speed and ISO. You still have the option of changing settings around through your function/setting panel on your camera…you can alter white balance, metering, etc.
Tv – Similar to Program, this is another semi-auto function in which the camera sets everything but the shutter speed. During this option, you can set it to expose your image to as much light or as little light as you so choose.
Av – Again, just like Tv except it refers to Aperture (the size of the opening in the lens).
M – Manual: This gives you free range to do whatever you want with the exposure settings.
As a note, you can effectively change your white balance elements manually or use a preset as described above with all of these settings.
Now as you go around the dial, we hit C1 and C2. These are used to set custom settings in your camera so you can go back to them at any time. It is sort of like when you are in a nice new car with seats that have memory. You adjust it, it remembers. You can get out of the car, someone else can drive it, but when you get back to the seat and hit the “C1″ button, it will go back to where you had adjusted it originally.
The last couple of icons on the dial are pretty much automatic settings. Read the cameras manual to understand how they work. On this model you will find the following modes: Portrait, Landscape, Night Scene, and Slow Shutter. In addition, Canon has a function called Panoramic Images that allow you to take multiple pictures then stitch them together once you get to the computer. Movie mode is the last thing left, and it is self-explanatory.
Hope this helps!
