… I just play one on TV.
Or in my head.
Whatever.
Anyway, “white balance” is a concept that I don’t fully understand, but it’s easy to see the effect if you play with your digital camera’s settings and take pictures of the same thing using different settings. I was playing with my tiny little Nikon Coolpix 5600 camera and took two pictures that show just how much difference your white balance setting can make.
Here’s my bedroom lamp. It’s loaded with three light bulbs that are (supposedly) slightly bluish compared to normal lightbulbs. The manufacturer claims that this slight bluish tint makes everything look more pleasing to the eye.
Here’s the lamp with white balance set to “daylight”, which, as you would imagine, is supposed to be used when shooting in sunlight.
Here’s the lamp with white balance set to “incandescent” (self-explanatory, no?).
The funny thing is, in both of these pictures, the light doesn’t look anything like it does in real life. The real light is somewhere between these two extremes.
Huh. I guess that just serves to remind me that this is a cheap point-and-shoot camera. (Which is exactly what I got it for, anyway.)
4 responses so far ↓
1 apester // Jul 17, 2006 at 8:01 pm
ok, now in this post you’re just bored, aren’t you…
2 fried-neurons // Jul 18, 2006 at 7:06 am
LOL. Is it that obvious?
Or do you just know me really well?
3 apester // Jul 19, 2006 at 4:10 am
hahaha! a little bit of both i guess wehehe
4 christine // Jul 26, 2006 at 8:28 am
I’ve done similar experiments and still haven’t mastered it! It’s not that you have a cheap camera, it’s that you and I both are too lazy to read the manuals hehe.
What confuses me even more is the darn ISO feature my new camera has. If it’s set too high (or low?) pictures come out grainy. You have to know when to set it high or low depending on whether its dark or bright, and if you’re using flash or not. hay, I give up for now.
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