White balance on Digital Rebel XT

[aznb0y88]

Hi guys, i'm new to here. Some tipped me off to change the white balance on my camera photos if I want to make them less yellowish at night and more to a natural color but I don't know how to change the white balance to that. Any suggestions? thanks

[Digital Prophet]

It really depends on your camera. Canons are easy to change. My understanding (and no one go blasting b/c this is just what I hears) is that it is a more complicated process on Nikons.

Check your owner's manual. If you can change the white balance on your particular camera it is certain to be in there.

Prophet out.

[RobyMD]

First you'll need something as a reference point. I use a gray card I picked one up at Houston Camera Exchange for about $4. I've borrowed a friend’s expodisc at a wedding a few times and worked well but they are bit much in my opinion. Anyway back to the topic.

After you have the gray card or other reference, turn the lens to manual focus ( if it's in auto it will never focus on a completely gray subject). I try to focus it manually to the gray card while filling entire frame with it. It's very important to have the light hitting the card that will be hitting your subject.

Once you take a picture of the gray card you'll go to the second menu (the one with the camera icon and number 2) and go down to “Custom WB”. It will pull up the last picture on your compact flash card. If that is the white balance point then choose that picture. If you are taking a picture in fluorescent lighting you may notice it has a really orange tint. That what your camera thinks gray is so you can imagine the color shift.

Finally go back to the second menu pull down and choose "White Balance" and the last on in the right bottom is custom white balance. When you choose that one it will use what you set as the reference point as your white balance. I like to take another picture of the same gray card so I can see the difference after white balance is set. Turn the lens back to AF and happy shooting.

note: If you are going to be shooting in different scenes you can switch from custom white balance to a pre defined one such as shade if you are in a shady area or daylight so on and so on... but if you go back to the same lighting conditions you can change back to the custom white balance without going through the entire process again.