White Balance

I was playing around with the White Balance setting on my Nikon D90. Learning about WB rocked my world and forever changed the way I looked at a photo. Anyways, I was trying to set the custom WB for my living room, because the incandescent lights matched with the colour of the tablecloth was wreaking havoc on my wine shots. Everything looked strangely piss-yellow, with a hellish glow enveloping the frame.

I finally figured it out. There are 5 WB presets you can use (d-0, d-1, d-2, d-3, d-4), but what you need to understand is that when you set a custom WB, the settings are stored in d-0 by default. To transfer those WB settings to, say, d-2, you have to go into the camera menu to transfer. This took me about an hour to figure out. I scrolled to d-1, set the custom WB, and took a shot, only to see the same awkward yellow tinged colours. Finally, figured it out.

WB on auto - clearly, the whites look urinated on.

Second try, WB still on auto, but blue is still not blue enough.

At last, figured out custom WB, whites finally look white.

DF