White Balance Color Temperatures - Nikon D300 Complete Manual

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White balance intersects with other digital imaging color

issues on a D300. First, the photosites covered with blue

filters are effectively less sensitive to light than the green or

red ones. In low light conditions, this can be troublesome,

especially if you're shooting in a situation where little or no

blue wavelengths are present in the first place. At one

extreme, you get noise in the channel that has little light

energy hitting it; at the other end you can get a blown

channel because too much light hit it.

Since the histograms are created from the embedded JPEG in

NEF images and the camera's white balance setting is used for

that JPEG, setting a "wrong" white balance can produce

misleading histograms. If you shoot NEF images, use the

correct white balance setting or at least a white balance of

Second, many of Nikon's choices for white balance settings

are slightly suspect—either Nikon knows something about the

photosite sensitivity and color rendering that they haven't told

users about, or they've chosen values based upon visual

review, or the actual color temperature values reported in the

manual are inaccurate

Consider the following table:

White Balance Color Temperatures

100-watt incandescent

Sunny daylight (noon)

* Source: Nikon Field Guide, typical color temperatures

Using Nikon's defaults (either in the camera or after the fact

with Nikon Capture NX) tends to produce slightly warm (red)

indoor color, and a slightly cool (blue) outdoor color.

Or, I suppose, they could have just gotten it wrong.

Thom Hogan's Complete Guide to the Nikon D300