Automatic White Balance

[Richard Adams]

Does anyone know when the automatic white balance can be expected to work well and when not. I have noticed in my short experience with the camera that the automatic white balance seems pretty much spot on. Any opinions?

[Tom Roper]

It seems to work well in outdoor light, even in shade but Canon's reputation for AWB on DSLR cameras is just average, so trust but verify to cop a cliche. Also seems to work well indoors with tungsten/incandescent lighting, and seems to do well with fluorescent, pretty good overall performance by me.

It gets a little confused in mixed industrial lighting, where you move from fluorescent, sodium vapor lamps, halogen but overall better than I was expecting, and better outdoors than the Z1U which had a tendency to go blue in the outdoor shadows occasionally.

[Jay Yellamaty]

Originally Posted by Richard Adams

Does anyone know when the automatic white balance can be expected to work well and when not. I have noticed in my short experience with the camera that the automatic white balance seems pretty much spot on. Any opinions?

The AWB is pretty accurate out doors in daylight and quite close to good in mixed lighting. But I would'nt use it unless I had to. Shooting in rapidly changing lighting scenarios, indoor to outdoors, etc" for example. It's fairly easy to do a manual WB. Just zoom in on something white nearby in your frame, clothing, articles, walls, cars, etc" and press that little WB button. Always carry a little white card / piece of white paper for backup. Takes about 10 sec and buys you peace of mind.

[Chris Hurd]

For the industry standard in bounce cards, check out the DSC Labs Cam White:

http://www.dsclabs.com/white'nwarm.htm