Enrico Marega Interactive photography course
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White balance and RAW

Every light has a colour: warm from a light bulb, cool in the shade. White balance compensates for it. And if you get it wrong, the RAW format lets you correct it afterwards.

1Simulator

Balance the white

Choose the light in the scene and then the camera setting. When they match, the grey card turns grey again.

2Simulator

RAW versus JPEG

The photo came out overexposed. Recover the exposure in post-processing: the JPEG on the left, the RAW on the right. Drag the line to compare them.

Kelvin, in brief

1Simulator Colour temperature is measured in kelvin: a candle about 1900 K, a light bulb 2700–3200 K, the midday sun 5500 K, an overcast sky 6500 K, shade 7500 K and above. The lower the number, the warmer the light.

1Simulator When you set 3200 K you’re telling the camera: the light here is warm, cool it down. But if the real light is sunlight, the photo turns blue. The names of the settings vary a little between brands: light-bulb light is called Incandescent on Nikon, Sony and Fujifilm and Tungsten on Canon and Ricoh; Daylight, Shade, Cloudy and kelvin values are on all of them.

2Simulator RAW saves the sensor data before these choices are made: you can change them later without losing quality. JPEG is already processed and compressed. Each brand has its own RAW format: NEF on Nikon, CR3 on Canon, ARW on Sony, RAF on Fujifilm, DNG on Ricoh.

Key points

  • White balance compensates for the colour of the light: a low number cools, a high number warms.
  • Auto white balance works almost always, but it tends to over-correct sunsets and warm light.
  • RAW keeps more information: white balance and exposure can be corrected later, and highlights are easier to recover.

Try it yourself

Photograph the same scene under a household light bulb with white balance on Daylight, on Tungsten and on Auto. If you can, shoot RAW+JPEG and try correcting the colours of both.

Post the result and tag me @enrico.marega, or send it to me by DM: I’d love to see how you tackled it.

Quick check

A photo at home under light bulbs: everything is orange. Which setting do you choose?
Why can an overexposed RAW be recovered better than a JPEG?