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Auto White Balance

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A digital camera's white balance setting compensates for the different colors of various light sources—fluorescent, which has a “green” cast, or a cooler-than-daylight light balance; incandescent, which has a “yellow” or a warmer-than-daylight white balance; and daylight—so that white objects in a scene appear white regardless of the color temperature (the warmth or coolness) of the light source.              

In Nikon D-SLRs, Auto White Balance combines with the Scene Recognition System to analyze each scene’s light sources, cross-referencing this information with 5,000 actual picture data examples from over 20,000 images in the camera's onboard white balance database. Even under mixed lighting or difficult light sources like mercury vapor lights, auto white balance technology calculates an ideal white balance for remarkably faithful colors.

For a thorough understanding of white balance and how it influences the final image, read Lindsay Silverman's article Setting White Balance.

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