CUSTOM SETTING

In addition to these presets, you can also measure the color temperature or, if you know what it is roughly, you can set it manually. This is the purpose of the CUSTOM and COLOR TEMPERATURE settings. When you choose the CUSTOM mode, an exposure area will appear on the camera’s display. To measure the color temperature, fill up this exposure area with a color-neutral object (figure 2.35). It’s best to use a gray card designed for the purpose, which you can trim down to a small size and carry around with you in your camera bag. You can buy a gray card from most good camera shops or on the Internet. If you don’t have a gray card handy, look around for the most color-neutral object in your surroundings with which you can fill up the entire measuring frame. Ideally the object would be gray, but white subjects will also do. The object can’t have a reflective surface—matte objects work best—and it should be uniformly illuminated. Focus doesn’t matter when measuring white balance, so you can get close to your color-neutral object. Depress the shutter-release button entirely until you receive notification that the measuring was ....figure 2.35), press the OK button to set the white balance. If UNDER or OVER appears, raise or lower the exposure compensation accordingly and repeat the process.