By Ashley at Eccentric Photography

Ever take a photograph and it seems like something’s not right? You have checked the shutter speed, aperture, iso and metering modes but something isn’t right.  Your photos have a weird colour to them.  Well the problem may lay with your cameras white balance settings misbehaving.  Now this doesn’t mean your camera is broke, it simply means your camera in the current lighting situation doesn’t know what white should look like.

The white balance on your camera interprets what should be pure white or more technically correct the temperature of the colour.  Sometimes our cameras can get this horribly wrong if you’re using an automatic white balance setting, or maybe you’re using the wrong setting.  In this article i’m going to give you a simple fix that will solve your problem.

If you have ever shot a scene where there is a lot of snow, or one colour is more dominating than another you probably know of the problems that white balance settings can cause.

Edinburugh Airport By John Gilchrist

In a snow scene where everything seems to be white colour temperatures can be thrown off causing parts of your photograph to look more “blue” than they are.  The same can be said for when you’re shooting a scene with blacks, blues and other dark colour shades.  The automatic white balance on your camera could read the wrong temperature giving us an image that’s not how we imagined it when taking it.

The best solution to getting the correct white balance is by using something called a grey card.  These grey cards can be picked up for relatively cheap.

A grey card gives the photographer a natural reference to use when selecting a white balance setting.  By simply holding the grey card out in front of your camera in the lighting conditions that you’re working in will allow your camera to adjust to the correct colour temperature, this will give you correct colour tones and bring more life into your pictures.

Any of the grey cards below are more than suitable for everyday photography.

Kodak 18% Grey Card

Opteka Premium Card

Lastolite LL LR1250 12-Inch Card