got a nikon d40, entry level job but been v impressed thus far. Limited choice of lenses cos of motor in lens rather than body but not an issue. However, had it in low light this evening and felt rather underwhelmed-i couldnt find a white balance setting that would reflect the surroundings and everything looked a bit pish. Would a better camera such as the d80 be better equipped to cope with such things? ive just bought the d40 recently and dont think ill outgrow it for a while but i was bit gutted it struggled so badly this evening

and normally v happy with results d40 produces (tho only had it since christmas)
flickr

RAW or JPEG? Doesn’t matter in raw as you can edit afterwards in PP. In JPEG it’s obviously more important and you could maybe try a grey card and custom White balance? Was it very dark, as that may make it difficult for the camera. I shoot in raw and leave the White b on auto and sort it out in PP

grey card? literaly a grey card to set wb you mean? had a white napkin and it didnt work 🙁 yeah pretty dark but couldnt figure out for the life of me how to stop everythin being sooo red

what about one of these:

http://photojojo.com/store/awesomeness/white-balance-lens-cap/12-15-email

look pretty good to me? (but then I’m pretty ignorant of most things digital!)

Jpeg, not used to/dont how to alter in aperture yet

that looks interesing mr nutt! and isnt it well late in the UK?

hang on im a hour ahead (off to bed now…)

Easy. You should have (unless Im mistaken) a custom setting, normally at the end of the list of presets if using on P or one of the manual modes. It means you can customise the white balance colour to suit the kelvin of light. Sometimes you might not find a decent one and may have to put up with a bit of a colour cast, but majority this should cover most. Just play around a bit.

If you havent, you should shoot in Raw, or if shooting in Jpeg you can alter it afterwards but you shouldnt really be altering Jpegs as the quality always suffers permanently the more you pull them around.

oh is it that time already!! thats what sobriety does to you ya see!! you lose track of what day it is and what the time is!!

do excuse me, I should have been asleep hours ago!!

fontmoss, have mailed you!

…what happened?!?! did I miss anything??!?!

The easiest solution (as has already been suggested) is to shoot in RAW. You probably got a raw processor with your camera. If not Raw Therapee is free to use.

It’s a simple as copying your images to your PC, opening the first one in your raw editor and choosing between the various automatic white balance options, tweak a bit if necessary then applying that setting to all the pictures. It doesn’t really add any time as you’re going to look at your results anyway so a couple of mouse-clicks doesn’t make any odds.

tried the manual wb by shooting a white napkin but it failed to register-going to look into that more today. Got aperture 2 so might play with RAW images and see how I go. Ta CHB