Better Available Light Digital Photography : How to Make the Most of Your Night and Low-light Shots

White balance techniques 87

Sometimes this works extremely well. Depending on the mix of

light sources, sometimes it doesn’t. Often it works better with

some lenses than with others and images made with a wide-angle

lens may have a slightly different Color Balance than those made

with lenses of a longer focal length. Joe’s philosophy has always

been that when the lighting gets tricky, try AWB fi rst. He is

amazed at how often this produces a pleasing Color Balance; if

it doesn’t, then it’s time to look at the other options.

Daylight: approximately 5200 K

This is a bit of a misnomer because the color of daylight changes

during the passing of the day, but in this case means that you’re

shooting “outdoors” and is usually based on midday, which

is the worst time of day to photograph anything. Colors per-

ceived under the midday sun usually serve as the standard for

color reproduction, and shooting in this mode makes colors look

the way they should. If you shoot with the Daylight setting

indoors under lighting that typically has a color temperature

around 3200 K, the pictures will have a warm, golden look that

you might like or hate. So if you don’t like the color of the

images on the LCD screen, chances are you’re in the wrong

White Balance mode.

This shot was made in daylight at
Mission San Juan Capistrano, but
later in the day, at 5:19 p.m., so
the colors are slightly warmer
than if it had been captured at
midday. The drama and the long
shadows would have been missing
in the fl at, harsh midday light.
Exposure was 1/640 sec at f/16 at
ISO 200. © 2006 Joe Farace.