White balance allows you to set the camera for the ‘colour’ of the light you are shooting under Tony. To a human eye a sheet of white paper appears the same colour in daylight, under a fluorescent strip light, or even an old fashioned light bulb. Cameras aren’t as clever as the human eye unfortunately, and that is what the white balance setting does. With film cameras it was necessary to buy different types of film (tungsten, daylight etc) or use coloured filters in front of the lens, so in this way digital is much simpler.
Its possible to set white balance accurately using the pre set function, but this is usually only necessary if working in mixed lighting conditions (inside a museum hall for example). For outdoor photography just set daylight, (sunny, cloudy or shade) depending on the conditions. Auto white balance is an option but I always prefer to set it myself, it retains consistency throughout a set of photographs, and I’ve never seen an auto function that I’m fully happy with.
If its ‘a-bit-sunny-a-bit-cloudy’ sort of a day I usually opt for the cloudy setting, that gives a slightly warmer result which is usually more aesthetically pleasing. This really comes down to personal preference. Once you’ve set it just get on with shooting unless the light changes dramatically.
As for exposure compensation I always aim to push the histogram as far to the right as possible, without getting clipped highlights (a sharp vertical spike on the right of the screen). It all depends on the position of the sun, how bright a day it is, and the colour of the thing you are photographing. On a bright sunny day and a mid toned aircraft I’d probably start with a +ve third of a stop compensation dialled in, going up to +1 stop or more some something black (Lysander or Lancaster for example).
For a white aircraft it may be zero or even -ve exposure compensation is needed to avoid the ‘blown highlights’ (pure white recorded with no detail in them). On a dull day the contrast between dark and light areas of your photographs is much less so you can get away with dialling in much more exposure compensation, so you may be using +2 for dark toned aircraft, and +third or +two thirds for light toned aircraft.
These are all based on my D100, all cameras are different, its just a case of playing about with it until you get the feel of your exposure system. Get used to checking your histogram after each pass its much better to find out after a couple of shots than when you get back home with a card full to download!
Hope that helps!
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