How To Set White Balance When Using Flash

When using flash on your camera indoors, it will not be the only source of light in the room. All other sources of light, like from incandescent tungsten bulbs or daylight spilling in through a window, will create mixed lighting that will require a specific white balance (WB).

Some cameras have a dedicated white balance setting for flash that will correct any colour cast problems. Most cameras, however, will produce good results with the Auto WB (AWB) setting, but not with any preset setting.

In order to find out how your camera sets to a particular white balance when you use the pop-up flash, shoot some pictures under tungsten lighting using the camera’s AWB. If the shots appear with a blue cast, then the camera will be favouring the room’s tungsten lighting. If the shots appear to have a yellow cast, then the camera will be favouring the WB of the flash.

One way to get around the problem of colour casts is to filter the flash on your camera. If there is a blue cast in the image, use the yellow filter material that you can get at your camera store and stick it over the flash. This ought to balance the flash for tungsten so that indoor lighting will come out looking much better in the photograph.

Perhaps a better way to set the right white balance is to use a white card in the light that is falling upon the subject. This will help a lot in studio situations with multiple light sources.

Ultimately, you need to experiment in order to understand how sensitive your particular camera is to various lighting conditions.

However, if you shoot your images in RAW mode you can easily rectify the colour temperature during post-processing. Although RAW images take up more space on your memory card, if you are not sure of the correct white balance setting after using the flash, simply adjust the colour temperature of the image at the computer until the image looks just right. Then save the image as a high quality JPEG.

Chris Smith gives photography tips in his ezine that you can get every week for no cost. He has also put together a complementary report for you called ‘How To Master White Balance’, which helps you solve any white balance problems. To download it instantly and to obtain the ezine please visit: photography-expert.com