White balance is a great setting to adjust and familiarize yourself with. Depending on the lighting conditions available while you are taking your photos it can change the tone of the entire picture. White balance is typically used for helping you get the colors in your photo to appear as accurately as you can get them to. Now most digital cameras have an automatic setting and the camera does this or attempts to do this on its own. Usually it works, however sometimes the lighting situation it too different for it to fix on its own, this is when you would adjust it based on the situation at hand. For example, if you are taking a lot of photos under fluorescent lighting then you are going to want to adjust your camera accordingly for this because fluorescent lights tend to make the colors and the overall tone of the photo to appear bluish. This makes the whole photo look darker and colder. To fix this coloring situation you are going to tell your camera to do the opposite of what is really happening. You are going to adjust it so that even though it thinks it is already bright enough and wants to tone down the photo it is going to make it brighter this will allow you to get rid of the bluish tone to your photo and brighten it up so the colors look more accurate to what they are. However, if you are working for the day under incandescent lighting then the exact opposite effect with be happening. You will notice your photos will have a yellowish tone to them, this is going to cause the entire photo to have the yellowish tone making the picture seem brighter warmer and more inviting by nature. However, if this is not the desired outcome you were hoping for then you are going to want to adjust the white balance setting on your camera. Again you are going to want to do the opposite of what the camera is doing. The camera thinks there is not enough light so it is making the picture brighter and in turn distorting the coloring. You want to tell your camera that there is plenty of lighting and to let in less lighting. This will allow your photo to tone down away from the yellowish color and back to the natural colors you were hoping to capture in the first place. Usually white balance is not anything that we have to adjust, most cameras have an automatic setting that will correctly adjust according to the lighting that is present, but there are a few exceptions to every rule! Finally I have my camera and it is correctly working so I will make sure to post my photos this week for the past few posts and this one so everyone can see and comment if they wish to on my work!
The ISO that you set and decide to use determines the amount of noise let into the photo you are about to take. If you are using a higher ISO setting then when you are taking the photo the light sensors will amplify the amount of light being allowed to come in and this will create a grainy noisy quality to the photo. However, just like all of the other settings we have learned about and discussed thus far, when used correctly ISO can make a big difference in the photo you are going to take. Let’s talk about the different settings. Typically the “normal” or standard setting on a camera is an ISO of 100. This lower setting allows you to take photos outside in the bright sunlight without too much light being taken in so you won’t have a grainy noisy picture. If you know that you are going to be spending the day outside at the beach or at the park then you will want to make sure your camera is set to and ISO setting from 200-400. These settings are the optimal settings for taking pictures in bright light situations. These settings block out the excess light giving you a clean rain/noise free picture. Next is an ISO of 800. This setting you will have to be careful with. It is a good setting to have and use when you will be taking action shots or are taking photos inside where it is not well lit, however if you are using this setting on a compact camera then you need to be extra careful with your shots. A compact camera and this setting mixed together will cause noise to be visible within the photo. This is a useful setting however because it give you a decent exposure setting while allowing you to use a faster shutter speed for action shots. Maybe you are snapping a photo of you kid sliding into home plate with the game winning run...this setting will help you capture that moment that much better. There are three more ISO settings to discuss. First is ISO 1600. When you get to settings this big it becomes very difficult (and for most cameras almost impossible) to avoid noise in the pictures. This setting will especially show noise if you are focusing abd zooming in on areas that have a lot of shadows or contrast. Our last two ISO settings are ISO 3200 and ISO 6400. Both of these settings are found on high end DSLR cameras and only the best ones will provide you with some sort of useable picture. ISO 6400 is extremely rare and the few cameras with this setting will still provide pictures that have visible noise in them.
