Nearly all digital cameras offer the possibility of adjusting the white balance. But who, to be honest, really uses the small, yet excellent, feature? And why should anyone use it?

While the human eye automatically puts itself on level with the brightest point in view, for standard analogue colour film, for example, this is not possible – as the film records the wave lengths corresponding with its design. The so-called daylight film is fixed to the spectrum of daylight and, in contrast to the human eye, unwavering.

This leads to pictures where, in the face of night or artificial light for example, the colours are hardly captured or the desired mood is lost.

Shots of light bulb light appear inevitably red, while offering very little colour differentiation and shots of neon lights appear green and pale.

For this reason many costly conversion filters, that are supposed to neutralise the colour depth, are offered in specialist shops for analogue photography.

However, with digital cameras there is fortunately a feature characterised by “WB” or “White Balance”.

A series of standard settings are offered with most digital cameras that are optimised for daylight, light bulb light, halogens, neon and night time shots. Some also offer the possibility of manual adjustment.

Anyone who closely pays attention to which lighting conditions they are shooting in, can then use the pre-adjusted settings and achieve neutrally represented colours, which fit the picture better, easily.

The manual white balance is very practical, although unfortunately not all cameras possess such a feature. If you aren’t completely clear about the light colour and still want to arrive at a neutral colour display, I suggest you bring a piece of white paper with you. Using the manual white balance, you can usually adjust the camera until it reaches the neutral white of the paper.

For anyone who occupies themselves with photography a little more, then this topic offers a lot of room for creative uses. One can experiment with the resulting inaccurate colours, which is actually quite fun after getting used to the trick.

It’s very simple. Instead of basing the manual white balance on white, base it on other colours. The result will be a colour depth that complements the colour tone you scaled to. That way you should be able to grant a sunset more redness by scaling to a green base, or donate some yellow, or blue, into a cold snowy day. The colour scale becomes very helpful here to help stay oriented.

In fashion photography, for example, it is quite common to photograph with film designed for artificial light in daylight, which more or less corresponds to the WB “Light bulb” setting. When taking portrait pictures with a flash, the face appears in the normal colour, while the background carries a cyan hue. Of course, a sufficiently powerful flash and a necessary proximity to the photo object are requirements to achieve this effect.

Various light colours are responsible for the above described effect. Most light sources emit heat radiation (the largest for us is the sun). Yellow to red light is emitted from light bulbs and flames, which do not emit heat radiation, in contrast to the sun. The sky with blazing midday sun also provides blue light for photographers while in the shade; this effect is more visible with snow or at night (and some concentration). That’s why people talk of the so-called blue hour.

In summary, a manual or pre-adjusted change of the white balance makes sense and also allows for a creative handling of colours.