White Balance?

<p>Hi. What white balance setting should I use when shooting motorsports outdoors during the day? what about night, with a flash?</p>

<p>I have a Nikon d40.</p>

<p>During the day? Use your camera's "sun" setting if it's directly sunny, and use "cloudy" if it's cloudy. Or, shoot in RAW, and adjust to taste afterwards ... or, if you have a good white target, you can use your camera's custom white balance setting to make it just right for each lighting situation, on the fly.<br /><br />Shooting at night, you have to take into account what will be the main source of the light in the image. Is your flash simply helping out with the available light, or is your flash the main source of light in such images? Are you talking about the pop-up flash on the camera, and shooting at subjects that are off at a bit of a distance? If so, the flash is probably adding <em>very</em> little to the actual light in the exposure, in which case you'd want to white balance according to the other light sources (mercury vapor lights, overhead? tungsten lighting? depends on the situation).</p>

<p>Matt,<br /> I have an sb600 and it provides plenty of light, and the race tracks are lit as well<br>

I just can't figure out what white balance to use.</p>

<p>If the SB-600 is providing <em>most</em> of the light in the scene, then set the white balance to flash. If the SB-600 is only helping to fill shadows, you want to set the white balance to match the ambient light. Which brings us back to ... what sort of ambient light are we talking about?</p>