I took a photography class in Vacaville with Melinda today. The first part was very basic; I knew most of what was covered. In the intermediate class, we spent most of our time on focus and white balance. I learned quite a bit about both. And I have changed some camera settings as a result. I disagreed with our instructor about shooting RAW, though. He recommended we all shoot JPG until we’ve had a couple of year’s experience. He did concede that if you have the storage capacity, it was probably best to shoot RAW. I started shooting RAW because I wanted to have the most control over my photos. RAW files are huge but the option of manipulating them is much greater with RAW than JPG files. So, I’ll keep shooting in RAW.
The camera has a huge range of white balance settings depending on the type of light source that you’re shooting under, whether natural or artificial. I learned that I will have greater control over my photos if I change the white balance setting to coincide with the available light source at hand and not rely on the auto white balance setting because that could change with each photo, depending on how accurately or inaccurately the camera reads the light source. Here are several examples of how the camera sees black, white, and 18% gray (the camera “sees” and meters everything as it relates to gray) with the various white balance settings, but all under, in this case, cool florescent lighting.
Auto White Balance, left 
Cool Florescent, right
Tungsten, left
Sun, right
Cloudy, left
Shade, right
And, the cool florescent light in question:
Ack- white balance! Nice demonstration with the photos of what we’ve learned! And I do like the starkness of the fluorescent shot!
White balance important! Interesting that our cameras read everything at 18% grey,digital of film. I’m just now learning to compensate for that in black/white with my Zone class.
Love love love the lemon!!!