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Here’s a quick five minute photography tip. One of the easiest and helpful things you can do is learn how to assign a temperature for your camera to shoot at. Why? Look at the two pictures below. What’s the difference between the two? The color temperature. Why spend hours trying to edit your images when you can fix it right off the bat?
And what is photography? Down to the basics, your camera captures light, reads it, and produces an image. Varying light sources emit light at different color temperatures, and as a result you will have a color cast to your images. If we can tell the camera what object in the shot is white, then the camera can adjust it’s settings to the appropriate color temperature. This is called “white balance.” Your camera has settings for different light conditions, the most obvious being “sunny, cloudy, etc.”
Look at these pictures from a Cub Scout dinner I recently attended. I used my Canon Powershot SD 1200 (a $150 point and shoot). The first shot was in Auto and the next was when I changed the settings to Tungsten lighting. All my images that night would have had a lovely yellow look. But by a simple change, I was able to save myself a lot of trouble. Now that we have a little better understanding of how to work our cameras with light, next week I’ll be talking about learning how to recognize and harnass beautiful natural light.
Alison S. says
Thank you for this tip! I will give it a try. I love the look I get when I turn off my flash. My pictures seem to capture natural light much better. However, I can’t seem to capture my 1 year old son with this setting. My pictures blur, but if I turn on the flash they are super dark. Can you help me? 😛
Marcel says
See if you can put your camera in action or sports mode. This should stop the blur. Check out my post this week on natural lighting and the tips there should help you out! Best of luck!
Bonnie says
Thank you so much!!! I’m going to try it. I LOOVE taking photos and hate it when them don’t come out right,lol
Marcel says
I LOOVE taking photos too and also hate it when they don’t come out so we can lol together! It’s a continual learning process:)
Queen Bee says
Thank you for this tip! It was very easy to understand. I’m going to go play with my camera. I’m always looking for new great camera tips!
Marcel says
I’m so glad it was easy to understand. If you have any specific questions, please let me know:) Best of luck!
Primal Homemaker says
Great post about white balance. I am a newbie photographer and these tip are great.
Marcel says
Well Primal Homemaker, I dig your profile picture and your blog so you are of to a good start!
Janice says
Thanks Marcel!
I never take the time to adjust my white balance WHILE I am shooting! I always fix it AFTER in Photoshop or Lightroom.
SO I definitely need to practice trying to set it while shooting. 🙂
Marcel says
You can use the presets without doing a custom white balance. But don’t feel bad, I forget too and then kick myself afterwards:)
Jessica H says
I really like these posts on taking better pictures. I think they are all so helpful – especially since I want to learn more but can’t afford to take a right now. This will be very helpful to remember! Thank you!
Marcel says
I’m so glad they are so helpful for you! If you have anything in particular you want to learn about, please let me know:)
Bonnie says
Thank you so much for this post. Trying to take pictures in hockey rinks and indoor soccer centre’s while my children are playing is tough and they never turn out. I’m going to give this a shot.
Marcel says
Changing your settings should make a big difference! you make need to change up a but, but send us a link when you get some results you are happy with!