Night Photography | White Balance (WB) & histogram

Experiment with the WB settings when you come upon ambient light sources.  There are a variety of lights and camera settings to match them.   Cameras can be set for White Balance (WB).  There is daylight, cloudy, sunny, tungsten, fluorescent, custom, auto and in some cases you can  tweak each of those individual settings.

Don't worry, when you come upon strong ambient light, you'll find that the Auto WB function of today's cameras are really, really good.

And imaging software can be used to compensate for mixed lighting.  Today's programs are quite user friendly when you shoot in 'RAW' and post process.

Here's the catch;

At night I use the histogram to determine if I'm exposing correctly.  It's dark out there.  Looking at the review on the back of the camera for proper exposure is likely to fool me.  Especially if I have the LCD screen set at "bright".

So, I set the white balance to the color temperature 'close' to the way I want it.  This in turn gives me a histogram that shows me the exposures that match.  

Using those inside functions is a way to really 'appreciate' the camera... ...and increase the odds of making better images. 

Old Faithful Geyser & Jupiter peeking through the steam

15sec  70mm  WB 4100K 

car headlights and ambient light from the Yellowstone Inn

  

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"See you out there"

                ~~~Bob