Abusing Custom White Balance

There are times when you want to alter the color of something you are shooting. The normal approach to this would be to stick a filter in front of the lens. I have a Cokin filter pack setup but I don't have the proper adapter ring for this camera and I'm broke.

So what do you do when you want a filter but don't have a way of using one? Well you can post-process in Photoshop or some equivalent program, and if at the time I had that available I may have, but not having that available I decided instead to abuse the custom white balance feature.

The custom white balance is a feature the camera has that allows you to aim it at a white object such as a white card, under the lighting that is present, and it will automatically adjust the white balance for that lighting. The camera actually has quite a lot of range, I've taken photos under sodium vapor lighting after adjusting for it.

So what happens if you aim it at something that isn't white and set the custom white balance? Well, it tries to make that white. Aim the camera at something red and it will shift the color to blue.



That's how I got this photo, aimed at a neon sign, set the white balance, and then photographed the moon in clouds.