Different lighting calls for difference white balance settings inside of a camera. When the temperature of the light in a scene changes, if set to Auto White Balance (AWB), your camera will automatically alter its settings to compensate for the temperature. This ensures the color of the resulting photo is as accurate as possible. During 99% of photo shoots, AWB does a great job at figuring things out. It’s the other 1% that may need intervention.
Did you know that you can set the white balance on your Canon camera to an available preset? If not, please go ahead and read the recent post I wrote that discusses white balance in all its glory. The post shares some good information. For this post however, I’d like to simply offer a recap of what I shared earlier.
To set your Canon DSLR camera’s white balance to one of the available presets, turn your camera on and press the Q button on the back of it. Then, navigate by touch or by using the arrow buttons on the back of the camera to the white balance option. If you’ve never changed this option to anything else before, it should say AWB. Once in the White Balance area, either touch one of the presets to select it or navigate to one of them by using the arrow keys again. When you’re happy with your selection, press the SET button that sits at the center of the arrow keys to accept the change. After this, you should return to the regular screen on the back of the camera and you can go ahead and take your photos.
If you’re in a mixed light situation, such as being in the shade or being in a room with both sunlight and incandescent light or florescent light and some sort of warmer light, you may need to use a custom white balance. Your camera is likely to get confusted in situations like this and it may choose an ineffective white balance setting. To set a custom white balance, you’ll need to take a photo of something that’s supposed to be white in one of these scenes. A white card or a white board would be ideal. That’s right, just go ahead and take a regular picture of one of these things. Next, you’ll need to press the MENU button on the rear of your camera and navigate to the Custom White Balance option. If the photo of the white object you took is the most recent photo you captured, all you need to do is to press the SET button once again. If a confirmation box appears, just go ahead and press the OK option.
The final step you’ll need to take is to navigate back to the white balance preset options as you did earlier. This time though, you’ll scroll all the way to the right and you’ll set your camera to the Custom option. Accept that change and then exit out and start taking your photographs. It’s pretty easy.
If you have any questions or further suggestions, please ask or add them below. Thanks!
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