Where can I find technical information on "White Balance" in digital photography?

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Request for Question Clarification by pafalafa-ga on 09 Feb 2005 09:55 PST

Is this the sort of information (and the level of detail) that you're looking for:


http://www.cs.mtu.edu/~shene/DigiCam/User-Guide/white-balance/wb-concept.html


Note in particular, the segment on digital cameras:

"...color films can only correctly record the colors in certain range
of color temperatures. Therefore, we have daylight and tungsten films.
On the other hand, digital cameras are very different! Digital cameras
usually have built-in sensors to measure the current color temperature
and use an algorithm to process the image so that the final result may
be close to what we see (with our eyes, of course). But, the
algorithm(s) being used may not be accurate enough to make every
situation correct. Under some difficult situations when the in-camera
algorithm is not able to set the color temperature correctly or when
some creative and special effects are needed, we can instruct the
camera to use a particular color temperature to fulfill our need. This
adjustment that makes sure the white color we view directly will also
appear white in the image is referred to as white balance..."



Let me know if this is the right sort of resource for you.


pafalafa-ga

Here is a link to a interesting discussion on white balance vs white point
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/archive/index.php/t-488.html

I'm not sure if you want a better easy-to-understand explanation or a
very technical one. If, the former, check out this page
(http://www.best-family-photography-tips.com/white-balance.html) which
is on the www.best-family-photography-tips.com site.