White Balance - how to customize it on Fuji S7000, S20 Pro, S602

Hi everyone! My name is An, aka Photo Xpress and I have been selling camera accessories on eBay for more than 1 year. I am also a amateur photographer and I spent most of my time on learning nature and landscape photography. One question that I usually get from friends is 'Why is the color in my picture so different than the real thing?' 'Why does my picture look bule and all the color is washed away?'

I will like to take this opputunity to show a trick to correct this problem. It is very simple and it will only take less a minute to complete. The goal of this guide is to get accurate color by calibrating the white blanace (WB) setting on your Fujifilm S7000. This guide may apply to other digital cameras if you follow the user's manual to customized white balance setting.

Material: Photo Xpress lens adapter tube for Fuji S7000, Photo Xpress 55mm white balance cap

Huamn eyes can see the color white as white under any available light. Unlike human eyes, digital cameras need to be told "this object is white" in order to get a correct color balance. In order to do so, you will need to use it to take a picture of a white object and then adjust the camera WB setting. This is why some photographers carry a white card and take picture of it with their digital camera before they even start.

                                                                     Incorrect white balance              Corrected white balance setting

In the sample pictures above, the WB of the picture on the left is not properly calibrated. As you can see, the entire picture is too blue. The color of the singer's skin and the Christmas decoration in the back are not accurate. After calbrating the whtie balance by using the white balance cap, I took a second picture. As you can see the difference, the second picture has accurate and natural color. The entire adjustment process took less than 30 seconds.

Step 1 - Installing the WB cap

                   1.1 - Attach the lens adapter and remove any lens filter.              

1.2 - Attach the 55mm mounting ring onto your lens adapter

1.3 - Attach the white translucent cap onto the mounting ring. You may use this cap as a regular lens cap.

Step 2- Adjusting the white balance on camera

2.1 Turn on your S7000 and select either one of the shooting mode: P, S, A or M. The white balance adjustment only works in one of these modes.

2.2 - Change your focus to manual focus

2.3 Press Menu. Scroll to the WB page and then press OK to access the WB page. Then select the custom WB icon.

2.4 You will need to take a picture with the cap on. This step will tell camera that the image is pure whtie.

2.5 Press OK to finish and then exit the main menu. Now you are ready to take pictures with corrected white balance

That's it! Please remember to switch the manual focus back to auto focus. You may find a selection of WB caps in many sizes in my eBay store: Photo Xpo.

Thanks for reading

An

Feb 2007