White Balance Confusion

Pat50

@Moose, do you match the white balance to the light in the room or choose one that corrects for the light in the room? For example, if the room I am in has regular tungsten/filament lightbulbs and the color looks funny, should I choose the tungsten setting or should I choose a daylight or fluorescent lighting to correct for the lightbulbs in the room? Please help.

PBked

Hi,
White balance tries to correct for the light that is being reflected from your subject to make it more realistic and natural. Ordinary lights tend to produce an orange cast in your photos. You will notice that there is no preset for ordinary bulbs. What you do in this case is set a custom white balance. Your manual should give you details how to do this, but basically you take a photo of a white piece of paper (or grey card obtainable from a good photographic store) in your room. The resulting white balance setting can be stored and called up every time you shoot under that lighting. This may sound complicated, but is actually a very simple procedure.
Regards, PBked

Pat50

Thanks @PBked for taking the time to help. Unfortunately, I just cannot see myself setting a new custom white balance for every room I'm in so I would really prefer to use one of the preset white balance choices. So, if I am in a room with fluorescent lights, which white balance should I choose; the one marked Fluorescent or some other one?

PBked

The fluorescent preset is for white light tubes, so for other types of lighting use the tungsten preset.
Of course, if you shoot in RAW, it doesn't matter which preset you choose as any of them can be substituted in post-processing.
Regards, PBked

Pat50

Ok, great! Thanks very much.