White Balance for your D90

I found a series of videos on YouTube devoted to using the Nikon D90. One of the constant questions I get is, “How do I set my white balance?”

This video will show you how to work with all types of white balance settings on a D90:

Pay particular attention to the manual settings at the end of the video. This guy does a good job of presenting the white balance menus but one thing I would add is to make sure the paper you use to do the manual setting is a neutral white. Compare different pieces of paper to each other and choose the whitest. Also, make sure the table you set the paper on doesn’t show through. If the table is red, for instance, it will throw the white balance to the blue side if it’s visible through the paper.

The best way to set manual white balance is to use a gray card. You can find one at any decent photo store for less than ten bucks. It is a neutral gray color that represents the middle of Ansel Adams Zone System. That’s why you may have heard it referred to as “middle gray”. Using this card is also a great way to obtain an average exposure in the field under difficult lighting conditions. You simply take an exposure reading of the card under the same lighting conditions as your subject and it will give you a perfect starting point for which to expose that particular scene. Now your snow will look pure white and your pine trees will be a beautiful deep green! It’s a good way to get white teeth as well.

Every aspiring photographer should have a gray card in their camera bag at all times.

The only way to improve upon this technique is to shoot RAW files but that’s another post.