White balance is one of the things on the Oh God, I'm Never Going To Need To Do That list (along with metering, which I suppose I'm actually going to have to look at now). I thought it was just another stupid, finicky thing that stupid, finicky photographers went on about in order to make themselves feel superior. Then I tried to take pictures in our dining room and found that everything came out yellow. That was when I found my inner stupid, finicky photographer. I think I'll call her Francesca.

None of the pictures I took during my accidental discovery of the need for white balance really worked for blogging purposes, so about an hour ago I dragged our favourite model Fred off his sofa (yes, he has his own sofa. What of it?) and cobbled this together. It's all very last-minute, and I used my 50mm manual focus lens, which is why some of the pictures are slightly fuzzy. Francesca is sighing in frustration but has promised not to interfere because it's New Year's Eve and even imaginary finicky photographers like a night out.

So, here is Fred, in the yellow dining room.



EXIF:
Aperture: f/1.8
Shutter speed: 0.125 sec (1/8)
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm

As you can see, he looks yellow. And instead of going, "Oh, bugger, Fred is yellow", we can instead go to the white balance settings on Nicky's menu and sort it out. Here is Fred, in the same place, with the white balance set to "incandescent".



EXIF:
Aperture: f/1.8
Shutter speed: 0.125 sec (1/8)
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm

Much less yellow! Hooray!

I couldn't test out all the white balance settings, as we seem to be short of fluorescent lighting and, oh yes, sunshine), but I did take Fred outside to test the "cloudy" setting. And you'd better be grateful to Fred and me for that, because it's bloody freezing out there. Here is shivering Fred on auto white balance:



EXIF:
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter speed: 0.02 sec (1/50)
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm

A tad washed-out, no? Here he is on "cloudy":



EXIF:
Aperture: f/3.5
Shutter speed: 0.02 sec (1/50)
ISO: 200
Focal length: 50mm

I'm going to be honest with you: before the awakening of Francesca, I would have looked at that first outdoor shot and said, "What? That's close enough. It's a camera, not a mechanical eyeball." However, the second picture shows the colour that Fred actually is. And having seen that, I look back at the first one and think, "Ugh, flat and dull." Dammit, Francesca.

Next up: some Reasonable Resolutions.