Attention Rebel XS (1000D) Owners!

[AgentDrex]

I have a question that popped into my head this morning. On my A3000IS, to set a custom white balance you simply point the lens towards what you're eye views as white and hit the display button. This tells the camera to adjust the colors according to what you told it was white. I liked that, simple and highly effective. This is a $130 camera.

Now with the almost $600 XS I lug around now, to set a custom white balance, you have to point the lens towards something white, take a picture of it, go into the menus, go to custom white balance and choose the photo you just took. This is slightly more work, yet this part doesn't necessarily bother me. Its the fact that as you take a picture there is already some sort of white balancing going on, be it a preset or a previously chosen custom white balance.

Wouldn't this preset (or former custom wb) effect the photo you're taking of something white? Its already seeing white possibly a different way than your eyes and I thought maybe this would somehow impact the white you want it to adjust for.

I'm thinking of getting one of those white balance caps you set over your lens, point it at the main light source of the scene, and do a custom balance based on that.

Wouldn't it just be easier to bypass the photo taking stage like my A3000IS does?

 

[Overread]

Its strictly not white you are supposed to meter off ( at least not with DSLRs) but 18% grey as I understand it - which is why you get those grey cards and expose disks.

As for the method the white balance on the shot you take won't matter as you are telling the camera the value of a specific point on that shot. You are telling the camera that that is 18% grey and it will then adjust the whitebalance to match 18% grey at that point - thus the rest of the colours will slide into their correct place.