White Balance

One of the most important thing you should learn to take a proper photo is your white balance setting.

Most people just leave set it to auto, which is fine 90% of the time. But there are times where you need to adjust it to make the colours of your photos look right.

The settings in a Canon P&S cameras is the following"

1. Auto - self explanatory.
2. Daylight - use this if you are outdoors in full sun or cloudless skies.
3. Cloudy - use this if you are outside with overcast skies or cloudy conditions.
4. Tungsten - use indoor or outdoors when the light source is from tungsten lights like a light bulb.
5. Fluorescent - use this indoors when the light source is from fluorescent lamps like those long white or circular tubes.
6. Fluorescent H - use indoors when light source is high intensity fluorescent lamps like those in a gymnasium.
7. Custom - use when light source doesn't fall into any of these and you can't get a proper adjustment. Read your camera manual on how to set this.

These are just guides and you are free to change the settings around and see how your picture looks. Sometimes one setting will make the picture look too yellow, sometimes too blue. Only with experience can you really determine whether you set it right or not.

I have been taking photos for 5 years and only recently did I realize how important it is to have the proper white balance setting. I was always getting photos that are too blue and thought it was the camera. Turns out I had the wrong setting or the Auto setting was not cutting it.

With the advent of CFL bulbs, you might have a little difficulty setting the right white balance. Because these lights don't fall into any of these categories, you may have to use the custom setting to get the right colours. Some of my shots under CFL turned out too red.