Nikon D3400 White Balance: What Is D3400 White Balance And Why You Should Understand It

So first of all, the white balance of the D3400, what is it about? Well, when you walk into a room, or even outside, the quality of the light and the hue of the light will change. It changes depending on whether you are in natural or artificial light and, if you are in artificial light, what type of artificial light you are in. Now your eye and brain filter all of that, 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 photos in light that has a color cast. If you do not notice the ambient color, after the session you may find that your images have a fairly yellow or orange tint, or a fairly blue tint. White balance, and white balance settings, allow you to set the camera to actually see what you want to see and set white. Now the important thing to remember about white is that it is not a single color, it is a combination of all colors and therefore once you set white with the camera, the camera can set all other colors in consecuense.

There are two ways to view the Nikon D3400’s white balance. The most obvious is when you look at the back of the camera while pressing the I and the D3400’s white balance is 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 those settings. If you want to do that you need to go to the MENU OPTION and then go to the SHOOTING MENU, then go down to white balance and you will see that you have all the options that you would see when you look in the I , but, if you press the 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 in fluorescence that are slightly different) or else you have different options then you have an option that allows you to change that option within the camera. You can do this using the multi selector and you can make more green or more magenta or blue or more red. Personally, I think this is probably too detailed unless you are opting for a very specific look, but the general way to change, which is to go back and just look at the general options in white balance when in the shooting menu, should be enough for you to decide which is the best option. But if you want to enter and change cloudy for example and make it a little more red or a little more blue then you can do it but you cannot make those changes to that option from the I button.

So let’s take a look at the D3400’s white balance options when we exit the menu and look at them with the Ibutton. The first is AUTO. This tries to select the most obvious white balance. It has pretty good auto-detection for white balance, and in most cases it will be fine at AUTO with the Nikon D3400. It’s pretty good for most circumstances. The next white balance option for the D3400 is INCANDESCENT or tungsten. That has a pretty yellow hue because it’s more like candlelight or home and residential lighting, which tends to be tungsten and so you’ll try to take some of that warmth, some of that orange and yellow, and add some light. blue to make everything white in that image whiter and less yellow.

The next one is FLORESCENT. Fluorescent lighting is a bit more blue and is the kind of lighting you get in offices, often strip lighting, which gives things a very blue hue. As a consequence of that, the camera will try to add a bit of yellow to the image. Then we go to DIRECT SUNLIGHT. Now direct sunlight is actually much 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 you fire the flash, whether it’s the built-in flash or an external flash, it’s a very cool white hue. So as a consequence of that, the Nikon D3400 tries to add a bit more yellow to give a more natural tone to the color, and especially obviously for skin tones which is quite important. Then the next two which are CLOUDY and SHADOW. As we move up the scale, the environment becomes increasingly blue, so the D3400’s white balance settings will try harder to add a little yellow and a little orange just to warm up the image and make make it look less cold. If you are shooting in the shade or in the cloud, there is a natural tilt for the image to look slightly blue, a little cool, so you want a bit of orange to warm up the image.

A good experiment is to take the same image, going through all the white balance settings on the Nikon D3400. Then you can 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 simple way to affect the tone of the 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 shot. Conversely, adding blue can make the image appear quite cool. It’s really useful to experiment with these D3400 white balance settings.