Nikon D3400 White Balance – What is D3400 White Balance and why should I understand it?

So first of all, what is the white balance of the D3400 all about? Well, when you walk into a room, or even outside, the quality of the light and the tone of the light will change. It changes depending on whether it’s in natural or artificial light and, if it’s in artificial light, what kind of artificial light it’s in. Now your eye and your brain filters all of that out, so normally you don’t even recognize it, but the camera will because the camera is quite objective while your eyes and brain are quite subjective. Generally, you don’t want to take pictures in light that has a color cast. If you don’t notice the ambient color, after shooting, you might find that your images have a fairly yellow or orange tint, or have a fairly blue tint. White balance, and the white balance setting, allows you to set the camera to effectively see what you want to see and set white. Now the important thing to remember about white is that it’s not a single color, it’s a combination of all colors, and so once you set white with the camera, the camera can set all other colors to consequence.

There are two ways to view the white balance of the Nikon D3400. The most obvious is when you look at the back of the camera while pressing the button me and the white balance of the D3400 is the third on the top line and that gives you the option to select the white balance you want. However, it does not allow you to change the white balance within that setting. If you want to do that you have to go into the OPTION MENU and then go into the SHOOTING MENU then go down to white balance and you’ll see you have all the options that you would see when you look in the me but, if you press your multi-selector to the right, it will give you the option to decide to have a different option within that main sub-option (so for fluorescence, for example, you have seven more options under fluorescent). which are slightly different) or if you don’t have different options, then you have an option that allows you to change that option within the camera. You can do it using the multi-selector and you can make it more green or more magenta or blue or more red. Personally I think this is probably too verbose unless you’re looking for a very specific look, but the general way to switch, which is to go back and just look at the general options in white balance when you’re in the shooting menu, should be enough for you to decide your best option. But if you want to go in and change cloudy, for example, and make it a little more red or a little more blue, you can, but you can’t make those changes to that option from the me button.

So let’s take a look at what the D3400’s white balance options are when we exit the menu and review them with the mebutton. The first is SELF. This attempts to select the most obvious white balance. It has pretty good auto detection for white balance and in most cases you’ll be fine on AUTO with the Nikon D3400. It’s pretty good for most circumstances. The D3400’s next white balance option is INCANDESCENT or tungsten. That has quite a yellow hue to it because it’s more like candlelight or home and residential lighting which tends to be tungsten lighting so you’re going to try to take some of that warmth away some of that orange and yellow and add some of the blue one to make whatever is white in that image more white and less yellow.

Next up is FLORESCENT. Fluorescent lighting is a little more blue and it’s the kind of lighting you get in offices, often strip lighting, which gives things a very blue tint. As a consequence of that, the camera will try to add a bit of yellow to the image. Then we move on to DIRECT SUNLIGHT. Now, direct sunlight is actually a lot bluer than you might imagine, so the D3400’s white balance setting tries to add a bit more yellow to give it a more natural look. Next is FLASH. When the flash fires, whether it’s the built-in flash or an external flash, it’s a very cool white tone. So, as a consequence of that, the Nikon D3400 tries to add a bit more yellow to give the color a more natural tone, and especially obviously for skin tones, which is quite important. Then the next two which are CLOUDY and SHADOW. As we go up the scale the environment gets bluer and bluer so the D3400’s white balance setting will try harder to add a little bit of yellow and a little bit of orange just to warm up the image and make make it look less cold. If you’re shooting in the shade or in cloud, there’s a natural inclination for the image to look slightly blue, slightly cool, so you want a bit of orange to add warmth to the image.

A good experiment is to take the same photo, going through all the white balance settings of the Nikon D3400. You will then be able to see exactly how white balance changes the ‘feel’ of an image. The D3400’s white balance can be used very creatively once you get the hang of it, as it’s a very easy way to change the tone of an image. For example, adding yellow adds warmth to an image and gives the impression of sunlight, which in turn can make the image feel like a summer photo. On the contrary, adding blue can make the image look quite cold. It’s really helpful to experiment with these D3400 white balance settings.