Ever look at a photo and see everything with a bluish or orange cast and wonder why it came out like that? The problem is white balance, which adjusts the relative amounts of the primary colours Red, Green and Blue in the picture so that neutral colours are represented correctly. To take photography in different lighting conditions and still capture the correct colours, you might want to know how white balance works and the basic guidelines to keeping the colours straight.

The reason a photo taken outdoors and a photo taken indoors differs is because the lights produced by the sun or lamps or in the shade are made up of different levels of coloured light. With digital cameras you can adjust each colour to shift the colours so everything is colour casted correctly. While our eyes adjust to differences, the camera sensor doesn't, unless you have it set to automatic White Balance of course.

The next thing to understand is that colour equals temperature. Well sort of. The warmer the colour, the colder the temperature. There are lots formulas and scientific explanations but unless you are a physicist the only thing you need to appreciate is the symbols and the numbers. The temperature of colour is measured in Kelvins and refers to how hot something would have to be heated to glow that colour. No, it's not the same as Celsius or Fahrenheit.

Most cameras have the same white balance settings.
		Automatic obviously does it automatically so you don't have to change the settings before taking the photo. It makes life much easier since there is not worrying about Kelvin, Tungsten, shade or daylight. Leave it on auto if you aren't bothered but be warned, the camera can get it wrong.
		Tungsten is for when you are indoors with a normal tungsten lamp. It tends to be quite blue and is named after the metal filament in the lamp.
		Fluorescent is obviously when you are under fluorescent lighting, and usually gives a slightly purplish hue.
		Daylight is self explanatory; it gives a normal bluish hue which works well when you are outside on a sunny day.
		Cloudy is warmer than daylight and despite its name, often works well for shots under direct sunlight.
		Shade gives a nice orange hue which works to counter the bluish light in the shade. It can also counter the blue from a cloudy day when the sun is hiding.
		Flash has an orange cast to counter the bluish light from the flash, though sometimes it makes the background redder then it should be.
		Manual, Custom is for when the other settings still aren't enough. Manual lets you point the camera at a neutral colour and it adjusts the settings accordingly while in custom you can change the temperature directly. It can take some time but the results can be more accurate.

Generally in photography, you are aiming for white to be white, so the other colours are represented correctly; it looks funny when faces are beet red or the ocean purple. Sometimes however you can mess it up deliberately. Sometimes for vibrant colours to seem even more alive, such as autumn leaves or sunsets, changing the settings slightly can make the photograph even more eye-catching and beautiful than if you had stuck to the white balance rules. At the end of the day understanding white balance guidelines is just as useful as ignoring them.