help with white balance!

[imagine photography]

Hi, This is my first time here and am very excited to find somewhere to ask my questions.

I am fairly new at photography and have finally figured out my ISO, appature, shutter speed and so on, but so far white balance confuses me. I have a Nikon D70 and am getting good pictures although my lights are not the best. (Recommend good lights if you like). My white background always looks dull and when I brighten it up my subjects skin color is off. I know that my white balance might help but do not know how to set it. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[imagine photography]

Thanks so much for replying. That was helpful because i do quite a bit of outdoor photography. Is there any way you might could give me some ideas though on the setting I would use with my studio lights. This is where I am having trouble getting my backdrop to look white while still keeping skin tones natural. There is a setting for incandesant and floresant and so on. Any advice is very happily accepted.

 

[fmw]

Thanks so much for replying. That was helpful because i do quite a bit of outdoor photography. Is there any way you might could give me some ideas though on the setting I would use with my studio lights. This is where I am having trouble getting my backdrop to look white while still keeping skin tones natural. There is a setting for incandesant and floresant and so on. Any advice is very happily accepted.

To make the white background white, you need to increase the amount of light on it. White balance corrects color casts, not luminosity.