Our handsome hero, pursued by a couple of crooks runs down the street, dodging the market traders and cyclists. The camera closes in to show the beads of sweat on his broad forehead, the sun in his eyes, as he desperately tries to escape his evil pursuers. Suddenly our man dodges through a doorway and into a shadowy alley lit by a single yellow bulb. He flattens himself against a pillar, as the baddies race by in the street outside. The noise of the pursuit fades. He has escaped! We see the relief on his face.

Notice anything? Replay the scene again in your mind taking particular note of the lighting for each shot. Full sunlight in the street, partly shadowed under the canopies of the market stalls, a sudden change to the shadowy alley where our hero hides, then back to the sunlit street, before finally closing in on our hero’s handsome face, lit by the single bulb.

The eyes-and-brain combo are amazing, adjusting as they do, for a wide range of lighting conditions. For instance just because I am reading a book by the light of a tungsten bulb, doesn’t mean I immediately assume the paper has suddenly gone a strange shade of yellow. I know the book has white paper. But take a digital photograph of this scene without adjusting for white balance and I might find that because of the light source the page, and possibly your face, does indeed look quite yellow in the image.

Any digital camera, apart from the most basic, will probably have a white balance (WB) menu that includes the following: full sun, cloudy, tungsten, various sorts of fluorescent and something called evaluative white balance. You just need to sort out which icon to use. You could leave the camera set to auto (AWB) of course, but why not explore? Try changing to the manual settings and you can discover how to take pictures that will need less retouching, saving time on the computer.

By telling the camera what sort of white light you are subjecting it to a more accurate colour balance will be achieved. Try the tungsten setting anywhere indoors, and you’ll see the colour range go cool, shifting into the blue part of the spectrum. The camera is compensating for all that yellow light you’ve just told it is present in the scene.

The cloudy white balance setting with its fluffy cloud symbol isn’t just for overcast days. It can be used anywhere shady. You can photograph where the available light is indirect - even in a church or indoors. I’ve used this setting to get acceptable images when firing the flash would be useless, or worse, unwelcome. With flash the portrait in the selection on the right would have strong reflections on those spectacles.

Fluorescents come in two basic types: one with a pinkish tinge and one with a bluish colour cast. To picture the effect of each of these, just think what havoc could be caused if the wrong fluorescent light was used at the butcher or in the frozen food store.

Evaluative white balance is useful too, but you will need a bit of extra kit - a handy piece of white paper, or card. Change the setting to evaluative, point the camera lens at the card and press the shutter. You have now set a marker for the colour white. The next time you press the shutter the camera will re-balance the rest of the colours using the white setting as a starting point. It’s that easy. It’s as if you’re the film director shouting “Lights, camera, action!”