White balance chat

[Diamond Hell]

Or in Canon, shoot something white in the light you want, go into the menu system and select the image to use for custom white balance, then select Custom White Balance in the picture set up and away you go.

If I'm honest using custom white balance under sodium lights at night gives a falsely 'white' image.  You need to be pretty careful with it, if you want an actual true representation of what you saw.... or you can have the 'balanced' version which takes the yellow out of it.

[DubFan]

On my Sony (A350) go to White Balance, scroll down to Custom, press right to Custom Setup, press enter (centre of d-pad), aim camera at something white (piece of paper) and press the shutter take photo, this photo pops up on screen (and give you a colour temp value eg 2500k), if you're happy with the "white-ness" of the image press enter. Done.
When you're finished in those lighting conditions you can change back to a preset or do another Custom White balance.
It takes about 10 seconds on my camera, which is probably close to your A200.

[bobbarley]

On my Sony (A350) go to White Balance, scroll down to Custom, press right to Custom Setup, press enter (centre of d-pad), aim camera at something white (piece of paper) and press the shutter take photo, this photo pops up on screen (and give you a colour temp value eg 2500k), if you're happy with the "white-ness" of the image press enter. Done.
When you're finished in those lighting conditions you can change back to a present or do another Custom White balance.
It takes about 10 seconds on my camera, which is probably close to your A200.

I was having a tinker around before and that's exactly how I did it as well, so I know I'm doing it right, yay! 

[jnufcuk]

Wow just looked at this setting on camera never realised it was so easy to do lol

Couple of quick questions:

Is it ok to keep a bit of folder whitena4 paper in camera bag then just take pic of it to set white balance?

And I'm going to a couple of meets soon and they are going to be under white light, what setting do i need?

High f or low f lol

Just purchased 'understanding exposure' book just haven't had time to read any of it yet 

[bobbarley]

Is it ok to keep a bit of folder whitena4 paper in camera bag then just take pic of it to set white balance?

Quite a few people do this 

[jnufcuk]

Wow fail on the spelling lol, bloody iPad.

Will do that I think then.

[thatwillis]

High f or low f lol

hehe 

All depends on what your trying to take a photo of. A lower Fstop will give you a closer depth of feild meaning things in the background will all be slight blured. A higher Fstop means more stuff with be clear. But you will need a longer shutter.

I would strongly surgest a tripod for meets! A high Fstop and a long shutter speed. Maybe a flash to do some light painting with if you fancy.

[jnufcuk]

High f or low f lol

hehe 

All depends on what your trying to take a photo of. A lower Fstop will give you a closer depth of feild meaning things in the background will all be slight blured. A higher Fstop means more stuff with be clear. But you will need a longer shutter.

I would strongly surgest a tripod for meets! A high Fstop and a long shutter speed. Maybe a flash to do some light painting with if you fancy.

You're going to WED or Homegrown aren't u? Will look on eBay now for a tripod lol

[thatwillis]

Yup Homegrown hopefully if in the country I'll give you some pointers. I also go to West London Collective. Massive show of cars there to photo!

[bored_Welsh_lad]

Can we clear up the F-stop business..

F-stop is the size of the hole allowing light through, this also affects the focal length of the shot you are about to take. So an F5.6 has a big hole and low depth of field in comparison to F22 which has a smaller hole but a better depth of field or the distance 1/3 in front, 2/3 behind the subject that is in focus.

If you imagine a correct exposure is the relationship between the shutter speed and the aperture, therefore if you have a big hole, it lets more light through, so you need to expose for less time. A smaller hole will take longer to let the same amount of light through...

What you can do is bracket exposures, so if your camera says that a correct exposure for a scene is F22 at 1/100th you can go F22 at 1/250th and F22 at 1/60th, which will overexpose and underexpose the images, but will sometimes yield better results than a "correctly" exposed image.

So, if you want lots of detail you run with a higher F stop (which is actually a smaller hole) and if you want to focus on key areas, you run a lower F stop. Just remember to play and have fun