White Balance

There are a few automatic things I trust in when it comes to my camera, and White Balance isn't one of them. Each camera has a setting to help determine how it reads colors and most, if not all, have several to choose from such as Sunny, Cloud, Tungsten, flash, etc. Some cameras, such as my Powershot A590IS go as far as to feature snow, beach, fireworks, and several other settings that make it easier for a beginner to select the right white balance setting.
I prefer to do a custom reading and tell my camera what it should interpret as "white." The way to do this is easy: Find a completely white spot, focus on it so that it fills the whole picture, then through the right selections (in camera) and set that as the white balance reference. For the Canon 500D (Rebel T1i), you press the MENU button and go under the second RED pull-down menu and the third option down should be "Custom WB." Select it, and the last picture taken will be on the screen. If that's the one you want to use, you click the SET button (in the middle of the cross keys) and select OK when asked if you want to use the WB data from that image.
On the Powershot A590IS, you select the option for custom white balance, then you press and hold the FUNC. SET button until the image reappears on the screen. The screen will go black for a moment while the camera is calculating.
For some, the use of gray cards and color cards is essential, but I found out that I can use any surface that I deem to be white and the results are usually good. Gray cards and color cards are fairly inexpensive and can come in handy if you are out in the wild or any other place where completely white surfaces might not be present.
Here's an example of what I have used in the past.

Canon 500D (Rebel T1i) EF-S 18-55mm IS @ 55mm 1/60s F/7.1 ISO 400

Now, here's the one after:

This is a crop of the same door after I used it to set the White Balance. I have also used snow, styrofoam, and walls.

Give it a try and see how you pics turn out.

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