White Balance

I can safely bet most compact cameras have never used anything other than the Auto White balance option in their cameras. But before you decide to use this setting the next time, be aware of what this does. As white light is a combination of different colours, the variation of any of these can add a colour cast to the scene. A scene photographed in this light with normal settings will also have an overall colour cast. The auto white balance option detects this colour cast and adds another colour to the scene to neutralize this effect. Hence the auto white balance setting attempts to make a white object shot with a non-neutral light appear as pure white in the photograph. In fact, this is the same as shooting a scene illuminated by daylight with Daylight White Balance setting, or one illuminated with tungsten light source with Tungsten White Balance. You might have observed this while trying to capture the special lighting in a room with auto white balance. The scene would have come out dull, without any special lighting effect. The remedy for this is Daylight White Balance. This will capture the scene as it is, with the special lighting effects, without adding any other colour cast. Experimenting with the various white balance settings can instill a special mood onto an otherwise dull image.

In the image above, the visual effect would not have been possible without Daylight White Balance. The shot was taken with the Olympus SP 510UZ compact camera.