White Balance - Minolta DiMAGE Xt Instruction Manual

WHITE BALANCE

White balance is the camera's ability to make different types of lighting appear neutral. The effect is
similar to selecting daylight or tungsten film, or using color compensating filters in conventional pho-
tography. One automatic and four preset white-balance setting are available with still image and
movie recording. White balance is set in the basic section of the recording-mode menu (p. 38) or the
movie/audio recording menu (p. 58). When auto reset (p. 49) is active, the white balance will be reset
to automatic white balance when the camera is turned off.
The automatic white balance compensates for the color temperature of a scene. In most cases, the
auto setting will balance the ambient light and create beautiful images, even under mixed-lighting
conditions. When the built-in flash is used, the white balance is set for the color temperature of the
flash.
Daylight - for outdoor and sunlit subjects.
Cloudy - for overcast outdoor scenes.
Tungsten - for incandescent lighting: household filament light bulbs.
Fluorescent - for fluorescent lighting: office ceiling lights.
Preset white-balance settings must be set before the image is taken.
When one of the preset white-balance settings is selected, an indicator
will be displayed on the LCD monitor to indicate the active white-bal-
ance setting; the effect is immediately visible on the monitor. To record
the ambient light, set the flash mode to flash cancel (p. 28). The built-in
flash can be used with preset white-balance, but will create a pinkish
or blueish cast with the fluorescent and tungsten settings. The flash is
daylight balanced and will produce good results with the daylight and
cloudy settings.
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