Venturing into White Balance

Whew. Photography is hard stuff. This month's assignment for Plum and June's Quilt Photography Workshop is all about white balance. And two days ago, that was something I knew absolutely nothing about. Of course I read through what Beth had to say on the subject, appreciated an informative post by Erica/kitchen table quilting, and to top that off, got the excellent advice from friend Katy/The Littlest Thistle to, ahem, consult my camera's manual. And after son-in-law shared a helpful {read: basic} summary of the topic at a family gathering last night, it all began to sound more and more interesting.

So today I felt brave enough to do some experimenting, beginning with setting my camera's custom white balance by taking a photo of some white copy paper. From there, it was challenge enough for me to run though the available white balance options, both indoors and out, the results of which you'll see in the mosaic below.

After comparing all the photos, here's the results. The photos on the left were taken using the auto white balance; both on the right taken with custom. In both cases, the ones taken with the custom white balance settings were truest to what I actually saw in each setting. The indoor photos (top row) were taken in natural light on a pale green surface; the outdoor photos (bottom row) were taken about 2pm on a cloudy day.

So what do I know about white balance now? At the very least, I know that it exists, that it has to do with adjusting color tone, and how to tweak those settings on my camera (a Canon EOS Rebel T3i). I also know that those settings are situation-specific, ie. affected by the time of day, location, lighting etc., and custom will need to be re-tweaked each time I want to use it. I'm glad to know all that, though I think that's enough for me to mull over for now.

Linking up with The Quilt Photography Workshop. And I'll be reading all the other link-ups with interest!