White balance.  It’s more important than most people think – controlls the overall feel of the photo, most notably in regards to how warm or cold it feels.  These days (and even with this old camera), the auto white-balance settings are not that bad.  But by setting it manually, it can be much better.

White Balance Menu Options

So reviewing the options: most cameras come with presets for straight daylight, cloudy conditions, interior light, fluorescents, sometimes a halogen fluorescent, and (most of the time, unless you’re unlucky) ad custom setting.  Look to the image at right – those are the exact settings in order from left to right.  On this camera, to get there: presS the FUNC button, then move down to the second option (where the icon of the sun is on the left, arrow to the right of it).  From here, you move left or right to select the appropriate white balance.

So, situations: in direct sunlight, definately leave it on the icon of the sun.  This will work pretty well.  Cloudy conditions, you’re thinking: go ahead & shove it over to clouds, right?  Not so fast: that works well for landscape photos, nature photos, maybe flowers & buildings.  But most of the time we’re taking pics of people.  On an overcast day, I usually leave it on sunny when the subject is other people.  This warms up flesh tones & makes the people look a bit more… orange, actually.  But it’s that healthy orange glow that people like in their photographs.

Once you move indoors, you’d think you would want the icon that looks like a bulb, right?  Move to indoor lighting.  Again, sometimes true, but not always.  That bulb is actually balanced for tungsten lighting, or typical indoor lights.  But these days, you can get indoor lights that are daylight balanced – if you use the indoor setting for daylight balance, your photos will have a blue tint to them.  Not good.

So, the general rule that I follow: if I can detect a slight yellowness to the light, I shift into this white balance.  If not?  Leave it at cloudy.  Yes, cloudy.  Cloudy is slightly warmer than most daylight-balanced bulbs so flesh tones come out well, yet it’s close enough that everything else will look natural.

The next setting, fluorescent lighting.  If you see flourescent lights, use this.  Flourescents give a slightly off-cast to color (usually slightly green), and you don’t really want people in your pics with a slightly green tint.  Unless it’s your kids after gorging on candy.  Then it’s normal.

Halogen flourescent?  I don’t use this, actually.  Ever.  Perhaps someday I’ll rethink that.

Custom white balance is a pretty large topic.  That will be covered in tomorrow’s post.

When dealing with a camera with such a small sensor, I find that I can’t rely on the auto settings in any way.  They kinda work if you’re only interested in snapshots. You know the type: flash in normal conditions that blows out the subject and darkens the room, something that really doesn’t make the pics good, just good enough. Auto mode on this camera isn’t even used when my 4-year-old picks it up!

It does a somewhat decent job when taking outdoor photographs in bright sunlight, though.   Unless the light is behind the subject.  Normally.

Auto is just hard to predict.  You’re much better suited to shift either into scenic or manual mode.

Scenic Mode

Buttons & switches on the sd500. Note the "SCN" and "M" buttons.

Most cameras have a scenic mode.  Some have several: lower-end DSLRs tend to have “sports”, “portraits”, “beach”, etc.  settings.  The sd-like series are no different – except that it’s a single scenic mode, and you toggle a menu setting to get to your desired setting.  I may write about this someday, but that’s not the topic I’d like to cover today.

To the right: “SCN” is the “Scenic Mode” option on the sd500.  Dial “M” for “Manual.”

Manual Mode

They can call it “manual” all they want, but it really isn’t.  I consider it more of an “almost manual” mode, or an “advanced scenic”.  Why?  Well, it’s somewhat limited.  You can’t set your own F-stop, nor can you control shutter speed.  You can, however, control ISO, white balance, exposure values, and a few other (lesser-used) settings.

Again, it’s not really manual, but it’s as close as you can get without hacking the firmware.

And that will introduce you to the next series of posts: why I care about customizing the settings.  Coming up:

• ISO – why I care & where I usually set it.
• White Balance – what I use & when. Also, how I customize it.
• Exposure Value compensation – where I leave it and why.