Lake Erie in Blue This is my third post on the topic of creative light balance. You can find the previous two posts here:

• Creative White Balance (exploring the incandescent white balance preset)
• Creative White Balance - Fluorescent - An Emotional Scene Copy

After specifically writing about using the incandescent and fluorescent presets for creative results, I have decided to go one step further and show a side by side comparison of all of the common presets. While it does not stop there since today's cameras offer detailed setting of white balance in Kelvins or manually based on a target, it shows the wide variety of results one can get even with the built-in settings.

It's interesting to note that all of this can be applied even with various filters attached. You may have a warming filter on, a warming polarizer, or even color effect filters like the Cokin Varicolor Blue / Yellow, Red / Blue, Pink / Orange, Red / Green, Blue / Lime, or others. Based on white balance settings the colors will be further modified

To start off, the photo on the left is taken with the automatic white balance in the camera. This was a 25-second exposure through the B+W 6-stop neutral density filter, combined with the Cokin Varicolor Blue / Yellow filter and a 2-stop Graduated Neutral Density Filter fitted in the Cokin P holder on a 72 mm adapter ring.

As one might expect, it's not completely neutral or natural. That was the point of all of the filters attached. It's warmer with hints of purple and exaggerated yellows. Overall, I thought it worked well with the sunset.

To contrast this look, the second photo on the right is with automatically calculated white balance in post-processing. It's even the same vendor. The camera AWB was in my Nikon camera, the SW AWB is in Nikon Capture NX2. Yet, it;s quite a different look!

I must admit that when I first tried this I was rather surprised. I knew the camera and the SW calculate the automatic white balance differently but it usually stays very close. I thought the difference here was rather striking.

For the next trio, you can see what a Sunlight, Cloudy, and Shade white balance setting does to this image. All similar, all warm, resembling the original camera AWB.

After these, let's cool things of a bit and check what an incandescent white balance will do with this scene. Isn't it interesting how it resembles the Capture NX2 calculated white balance? I guess it must have been convinced the thing behind the bridge was a light bulb!

Now for a similar, yet still different look the sodium vapor white balance setting on the left.

And to close things off, the fluorescent white balance setting finishes the sampler off. However, your white balance creativity does not have to end there.

You can set the color temperature to any level using the Kelvin setting.

Or, you can manually set your white balance off of something not white, not neutral. I know, that's not what the function was invented for, but why not give it a try!?!

Have fun and keep clicking!