White Balance examples

[Mike McCarty]

I was fiddling around with my white balance and thought I'd show some of the variations that are possible within the same lighting conditions.

As I was going through this I wondered just what it was that I was proving with these examples. The one thing interesting is that the first three: auto, incandescent and preset / gray card should have all been acceptable. Auto, theoretically, should be figuring out what is right (?), incandescent is exactly what it was, and the preset 18% gray card should have been spot on. To my eye the auto is not that great, and the gray card was the closest to reality.

The rest you would expect to be fouled up, but it does show the necessity of having your WB set to match your conditions.

Nighttime indoors, regular lamp bulb, Nikon D70, 500 ISO, landscape

1) Auto
2) Incandescent
3) Preset - 18% gray card
4) Flash
5) Fluorescent
6) Direct Sun
7) Cloudy