This probably seems like a no-brainer. If it’s sunny, select Daylight. If it’s overcast, choose the Shade or Cloudy setting. Those choices wouldn’t be wrong for those circumstances, but why not get creative? Sometimes you can actually make the mood of the photo more intriguing by selecting a white balance that doesn’t quite fit the light for the scene that you are shooting.
Figure 7.4 is an example of a correct white balance. It was late afternoon and the sun was starting to move low in the sky, giving everything that warm afternoon glow. The white balance for this image was set to Daylight.
But what if I want to make the scene look like it was shot in the early morning hours? Simple—I just change the white balance to Fluorescent, which is a much cooler setting (Figure 7.5).
You can select the most appropriate white balance for your shooting conditions in a couple of ways. The first is to just take a shot, review it on the LCD, and keep the one you like. Of course, you would need to take one for each white balance setting, which means that you will have to take about seven different shots to see which is most pleasing.
The second method doesn’t require taking a single shot. Instead, it uses Live View to get perfectly selected white balances. Live View gives instant feedback as you scroll through all of the white balance settings and displays them for you right on the LCD. Even better, you can choose a custom setting that will let you dial in exactly the right look for your image.
To use Live View to preview the white balance, first you need to turn Live View on or off by simply rotating the Live View switch clockwise as indicated by the arrow in the image of the back of the camera (Figure 7.6).