Blog #21 - Learning White Balance the Real-World Way (Wales, Waterfalls & Film Rolls)

We’ve just got back from a week in North Wales, and it’s one of those trips that already feels like a collection of small chapters rather than one story. Each day had its own rhythm. Beddgelert was our base, surrounded by the kind of scenery that makes you wonder why you ever leave the UK for landscapes. Between the rivers that cut through the village, the green valleys that stretch up into the mist, and the slate walls that hold it all together, it was one of those places where the camera almost feels too easy to reach for. Apart from the Thursday when Storm Benjamin came through and made the caravan feel like a washing machine, the weather was perfect. Clear air, soft sun, and the kind of evenings that make you wish you’d brought a tripod everywhere.

We’d planned this as a family trip first and a photography trip second, but the lines blur pretty quickly with me these days. Bow was in full assistant mode again, usually holding something she shouldn’t, and Emma had already claimed her corner by the fire for any indoor moments. It worked out. I got to wander, shoot, and still feel part of everything rather than drifting off on my own missions like I sometimes do. It’s the kind of balance I’m still learning to get right.

Caernarfon Castle

A week in cameras

The gear list was predictably varied. The drone came out early in the week near the waterfalls along the Watkin Path. I’d been there before but never with the drone, and seeing the water carving through the rocks from above gave the whole place a new sense of scale. The light was soft and the mist sat low enough to add depth without killing contrast. I tried a few passes at different heights, getting braver with each battery. That little thing still surprises me with how much detail it can pick up when conditions behave.

The Sony A7III did most of the heavy lifting as usual. I never really set out with a plan this time, which was half the fun. Some days it was wide-angle landscapes, other times it was quiet street corners or reflections in shop windows. A lot of it was just responding to whatever was in front of me rather than chasing something specific. It felt like a reminder that good photos sometimes happen when you stop trying too hard to make them happen.

Red Wharf Bay, Anglesey taken on the Sony A7iii with CPL filter

The Fujifilm X-E5 almost didn’t make it home. Somewhere on the lower part of Snowdon, the belt mount that holds my camera unscrewed itself and sent it clattering down a few metres of rock. That sharp intake of breath was instant. I picked it up expecting the usual cracked screen or jammed lens, but somehow it survived. A small scuff, a tiny dent, but still working perfectly. It’s not the first time I’ve learned that Fuji build their bodies tougher than they look.

Bow's photo of me taken at the campsite, taken on the Fujifilm X-E5

Then there was the Voigtländer Brilliant, my old faithful for when I want to slow everything down. I put a roll of 120 through it one evening at a pub in the next village. The fire was lit, Emma was curled up with a glass of wine, and Bow decided she was my assistant again. I let her press the shutter on a few frames while I tried to judge exposure in the dim light. I’ve no idea if any of them will come out, but it didn’t really matter. There was something nice about shooting film in a setting that warm and simple. No screens, no previews, just the click and the smell of wood smoke.

The star tracker experiment

The one completely new experiment for me was using a star tracker. I’d been waiting months for a chance to try it properly. Of course, the week we go away the clouds decide to roll in every night except one. When it finally cleared, I set it up in the dark with a headtorch and a lot of optimism. I spent most of that single clear night reading the manual on my phone and trying to make sense of alignment, calibration, and which way was actually north. I did get a few frames in the end, but only after realising I’d left the camera in an incandescent white balance setting from earlier. I usually shoot astro in daylight or auto, so it hadn’t even crossed my mind to change it. The result was a very blue, very odd-looking sky that didn’t match reality but looked oddly artistic. Still, for a first run, it was promising. Next time I’ll spend less time reading and more time shooting.

Crap midnight selfie on the iPhone

Learning to look at white balance

Somewhere between chasing waterfalls and dropping cameras, I decided to actually try to learn something I’ve mostly overlooked since I started shooting back in February: white balance. It’s one of those settings I’ve always left on auto because, frankly, it was easy. I assumed the camera knew best. But this trip I started playing with the built-in profiles like sunlight, cloudy, incandescent, and shade just to see what would happen. I haven’t touched custom white balance yet, that still feels a bit advanced for now, but even swapping presets started showing me how much of a difference it makes.

The first time it really clicked was back in that pub. I’d taken a few photos of Emma by the fire. The Auto WB version looked fine at first, but when I compared it with another frame set to cloudy, the difference was huge. Auto WB had tried to neutralise everything, flattening the firelight into something dull and pale. The cloudy version kept the warmth that was actually in the room. It felt like the photo finally matched the memory. It reminded me that cameras are clever, but they don’t feel the scene the way you do.

First photo, same settings, seconds apart, just changed the white balance.

Second photo, same settings, seconds apart, just changed the white balance.

That became the small thread I started to pull at for the rest of the trip. I’d try a shot on auto, then the same one on another preset, and see which felt more accurate to my eyes. Sometimes the difference was subtle, other times it changed the whole mood. Early morning light often looked colder than I expected, while late afternoon shots in the valleys turned golden when left on sunlight mode. It wasn’t about finding a perfect setting, just getting used to how each one shapes colour and tone.

What auto white balance really does

I’d always heard people say that Auto White Balance tries to find a neutral point, but I never really understood what that meant. At some point in the week I came across an explanation that said the camera works on a scale from white to black and always tries to make everything average to a mid-grey. It’s a simple way of putting it, but not technically how it works. The camera doesn’t use a numbered brightness scale like that, but it does try to find balance by assuming the scene should contain something grey or neutral. When it doesn’t, it guesses.

That’s why, if you point your camera at a glowing autumn forest full of red and gold, Auto WB thinks it’s looking at a warm colour cast and cools everything down to compensate. The result is a neutral image that’s technically correct but emotionally flat. The same thing happens under firelight or sunrise. The algorithm is trying to make everything even, but the magic of the scene lives in the unevenness. It’s the same logic that makes auto exposure try to average everything to 18% grey. Clever, but not always what you want.

Image from Digital Camera World (https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/KcTNxTTy57d8E4jEWsREZj-650-80.png.webp)

Realising that made me start noticing just how differently each camera interprets colour too. The Sony tends to run a bit cooler, the Fuji leans warm and nostalgic, and the Voigtländer scans have a tone all of their own depending on the lab and film stock. It’s not that any of them are right or wrong, they just see light differently. The more I paid attention, the more I started recognising that white balance is as much about intention as correction. It’s not about finding neutral colour, it’s about choosing which version of the scene you want to keep.

The feel of light

By the end of the week, I’d started to notice how different times of day each had their own fingerprint of light. The cool, slightly blue mornings around Beddgelert felt crisp and clean. Midday had a flatness that made me reach for the cloudy preset just to soften the edges a bit. Evenings in the pub or the cottage carried a deep amber tone that looked wrong on Auto WB but perfect on shade or incandescent. These weren’t technical discoveries so much as small moments of awareness, the kind that make you slow down before pressing the shutter.

I began to see how film quietly teaches you this without ever talking about it. When you shoot film, the colour temperature is fixed. If you load daylight film and shoot under tungsten bulbs, everything turns orange. You either embrace it or you don’t take the shot. It forces you to think about light as part of the photograph rather than something you can fix later. Digital has made it too easy to ignore those choices, but once you start noticing, it’s hard to unsee.

The funny part is that my little experiments didn’t lead to any groundbreaking photos. Most of them look similar unless you study them closely. But what changed was how I felt while shooting. Instead of scrolling through menus by habit, I started paying attention to what the light was actually doing. A few times I caught myself stopping mid-walk just to look at how the tone shifted as clouds passed. It sounds minor, but those pauses are exactly why I carry a camera in the first place.

What I learned, even if I’ll probably forget again

This trip taught me that understanding white balance isn’t about memorising Kelvin values or colour theory. It’s about noticing. It’s the same process that made me start with manual focus film cameras or shoot handheld at night until I figured out what worked. I’ve always learned by trial and error, by seeing what happens when you mess it up first. The incandescent astrophotography mistake proved that again. Even when it’s wrong, you still learn something.

I’m nowhere near ready to start setting custom white balance or carrying a grey card around, but thanks to Temu I have one haha. For now, it’s enough to know what each preset does and when to trust my eyes over the algorithm. It’s made me realise that photography isn’t just about exposure and composition, it’s also about colour temperature, tone, and how those small shifts change the way an image feels.

Looking back through the shots now, I can see the difference more clearly. The waterfalls look cooler and sharper than I remember, the pub scenes glow warmer, and the mountain air somehow feels visible in the light. Even if the technical side still confuses me half the time, it’s nice to see the connection between what I saw and what the camera recorded starting to make a bit more sense.

Image taken at Cwm Llan Waterfalls, using exposure bracketing/stacking.

The real takeaway

If there’s a theme running through this trip, it’s that you learn more when you let yourself experiment without worrying about the outcome. I’ve had far more complex shoots that taught me less. Between the drone at the waterfalls, the near-disaster with the Fuji, the manual reading under the stars, and Bow pressing the shutter on an eighty-four-year-old camera, it was a week of reminders. Cameras are tools, but light is the language. And white balance, as dry as it sounds, is part of learning to speak that language properly.

It’s easy to let Auto WB handle everything and tell yourself you’ll fix the tones later in Lightroom. But there’s something satisfying about choosing the warmth or coolness in the moment, trusting how it looks instead of how it should look. It makes you more aware of the real light around you rather than the version your camera assumes you want.

So if you’re like me and tend to leave white balance on auto, try turning it off for a day. Pick a preset, see what it does, and decide if it feels closer to what you actually saw. You’ll start noticing how much the camera’s interpretation can differ from your own. The technical side can come later. The main thing is to start seeing light in terms of colour, not just brightness.

As for me, I’ll take what I learned and probably forget half of it before the next trip. But that’s fine. Each time I go somewhere new, I pick up another piece of understanding. Between the rivers, the rolls of film, the drone batteries, and the countless attempts at getting light to behave, this week was one of those quietly valuable ones. And maybe that’s what photography is for me now: not chasing perfection, just paying attention.

Next time I’ll try to get more than one clear night for astro, and maybe, just maybe, finish the manual first.