> The purple towel came out blue and the > Christmas red bow came out bright and I do mean bright orange in color on my Epson > digital camera on the auto setting. Film may be dead but digital ain't here > yet either in quality. "Auto white balance" , along with auto-focus and auto-exposure are double-edged swords. For the novice, they give a fast track way to getting tolerable shots for most scenes most of the times. Once those habits are ingrained, it becomes easy to blame the camera for everything. The task though, especially for TRUE auto exposure or TRUE white balance is nigh-on impossible (almost*) when the camera has only reflected light (the stuff entering through the lens) to go on. It really can never (read it is impossible) distinguish between whether a scene is lit by light with a red cast or everything in the scene is red and the light was actually white (like the swan in a snow storm vs black cat on a coal heap example for auto exposure). To get this right needs some form of user input. Why it works most of the time of course is that most scenes do infact have a whole range of tones and hues. The problem for the new user (only having learned on aut-everything cameras) is that longer term the reliance on auto handicaps against moving further. The old farts who were brought up on film have a real advantage with using digital in that they have an ingrained understanding of lighting, exposure etc etc ... skills I suspect that will die with them ;o) Bob * My patented remote mounted "ambient light sensor" placed either on the hot-shoe or near the scene allows the camera to make auto-WB and auto-exposure calcs based on ambient instead of reflected ligh
