My camera's white balance

1. Auto white balance in open shade

2. Daylight white balance in open shade

3. Shade white balance in open shade

4. Cloudy white balance in open shade

I shot in the jpeg image format so that the same processing and white balance options for each setting remained consistent for the varying required lighting situations. This included using auto white balance, daylight, shade and cloudy settings for lighting situations including daylight, open shade on a sunny day and cloudy.

5. Auto white balance in sunlight

7. Shade white balance in sunlight

6. Daylight white balance in sunlight

   My impressions were that three of the four camera settings produced 'okay' results in all the required lighting situations. These camera settings were auto white balance, daylight and cloudy. I found the opposite to be true for the shade camera white balance setting. Here, unsurprisingly, this setting worked 'okay' in the open shade lighting situation (Image 3) but looked way too warm in the other two lighting situations. Even in the 'open shade on a sunny day' lighting situation (Image 3), although the face of the subject looked quite natural, the rest of the image was still too warm for my liking.

9. Auto white balance in cloudy weather

8. Cloudy white balance in sunlight

   To go into further detail concerning the other white balance settings, auto white balance produced quite accurate results. For example, with the daylight lighting situation, there was not much discernible difference between this auto white balance setting (Image 5) and the dedicated 'daylight' white balance setting (Image 6) on my camera. The same was true for cloudy weather.

10. Daylight white balance in cloudy weather

11. Shade white balance in cloudy weather

12. Cloudy white balance in cloudy weather

   With the daylight and cloudy presets however there were some differences in colour cast, although not as severe as with 'shade'. These differences were that the cloudy preset produced slightly warmer results in all lighting situations compared to daylight, something that was backed up by the accurate auto white balance renditions in daylight and cloudy weather. So, in daylight the auto white balance and daylight presets were very similar, as were the auto white balance and cloudy presets in cloudy weather.