This is a collection of pieces of advice to make your everyday photos more enjoyable to look at; a little more with every post. These are only bits which do not claim to be complete, but are rather all you need to know at that moment.


I assume my readers are non-professionals who are interested in capturing their memories in the way they have experienced them, instead of how their camera device automatically suggests an output, thereby speaking of using anything from a mobile phone to an auto-set DSLR.

About the author: I am Mareen Fischinger, a professional photographer, living and working in Düsseldorf, Germany.

You are welcome to ask snpsht a question! (Please check your spelling...)
If you would like to submit posts to the site, you can do so via this form.
(Please note that I know nothing about certain camera models and do not see myself in a position to give any shopping advice.)
January 22
White Balance tip via markbean (from balltillifall): In order to get really good white balance you have to stop relying on the Auto White Balance function on your camera, you might not realize it now but it probably sucks. A quick tip: Get something white (a coffee filter or plastic bag from Target work great). Put your camera on auto mode and manual focus. Stretch said white thing over your lens and take a picture. Go to your menu and set manual white balance to the picture you just took. Put your settings back the way you had them before and go take awesome pictures. The above picture shows the difference between the auto white balance on my camera and the manual white balance. As you can see the auto white balance really sucks. The coffee filter trick can sometimes tend to be a little on the blue side, but this can easily be fixed in Photoshop, and even if you don’t fix it looks much better than super orange pictures. Mareen adds: You may also photograph a subject laying in the light you are attempting to use.The so called white balance is actually a gray balance, so a gray surface appears neutral in its current light, which is being substracted from of the picture. I usually have my Canon camera set to 5200 K, and since I photograph in raw format, it is never a problem to change this later. If you want, here is some further read on digital-photography-school.com and Wikipedia.

White Balance tip via markbean (from balltillifall):

In order to get really good white balance you have to stop relying on the Auto White Balance function on your camera, you might not realize it now but it probably sucks. A quick tip:

Get something white (a coffee filter or plastic bag from Target work great).
  1. Put your camera on auto mode and manual focus.
  2. Stretch said white thing over your lens and take a picture.
  3. Go to your menu and set manual white balance to the picture you just took.
  4. Put your settings back the way you had them before and go take awesome pictures.

The above picture shows the difference between the auto white balance on my camera and the manual white balance. As you can see the auto white balance really sucks. The coffee filter trick can sometimes tend to be a little on the blue side, but this can easily be fixed in Photoshop, and even if you don’t fix it looks much better than super orange pictures.

Mareen adds: You may also photograph a subject laying in the light you are attempting to use.
The so called white balance is actually a gray balance, so a gray surface appears neutral in its current light, which is being substracted from of the picture.

I usually have my Canon camera set to 5200 K, and since I photograph in raw format, it is never a problem to change this later.

If you want, here is some further read on digital-photography-school.com and Wikipedia.


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