> 3 minute read

Managing White Balance in Low Light

In low-light conditions, it can be useful to take over control of white balance adjustments from your camera’s automatic setting. Let’s see how it’s done.

White balance can dramatically change the look and feel of a picture by shifting the colour temperature from warm to cool, or cool to warm. It’s essential for making different types of lighting look the same in photos as they do to our eyes. In most instances, this all happens automatically with the camera’s white balance in Auto, but you can also set white balance manually using the preset values programmed into your camera for different lighting types.

One situation where this approach is often useful is low-light photography, where there may be many different light sources in a scene, each with a slightly different colour temperature.

Auto or Manual?

The first thing to do is try photographing with the same auto white balance setting you would use for normal, everyday photography. In low-light conditions, this usually does a good job of shifting colours close to how we see them with our eyes, so everything looks natural. But if you find yourself looking at the back of your camera thinking things look a bit strange, you might want to change into a manual white balance mode.

To do this, press the Q button on the back of your camera and highlight the white balance option – it’s labelled WB AUTO if you’ve never adjusted it. There is also a default Function (Fn) button for this. Turn the rear control dial to flick through the other white balance settings. The most useful for low-light photography are INCANDESCENT and the three FLUORESCENT options. These will match the environments you’re most likely to encounter.

Get It Deliberately Wrong

Of course, you don’t only have to use white balance to get colours looking correct. You can also make them look otherworldly and over the top by choosing other white balance settings, such as Daylight, Shade, and even Underwater, which may not match the actual scene lighting. This is a really effective way to photograph outdoor low-light scenes, such as city landscapes and traffic trail images. Experimentation is key, so explore, and have fun!

Your Next Steps

• CHALLENGE Explore the white balance presets on your X Series camera and see how they transform your photos at night. Try photographing the same scene with a number of different presets – which is your favourite? Post it to social media using the hashtag #learnwithfujifilm. You can also submit your work here for a chance to be featured on our social media channels.