One of the disadvantages to having a camera with auto features is that you rely on the camera to just do all of the technical work for you. Point and shoot. Easy, right? Even auto focus which is a wonderful feature for my eyes pushing half a century old. Since I started using my Nikon D40 camera, I’ve been taking mainly outdoor shoots and indoor shots using the popup flash. Now that I am using my new light tent, I am taking photos with flourescent lighting. My first couple of shots (in my last post) came out so dark and flat looking even though I had my camera on a tripod and was able to slow down the shutter speed. I was getting quite frustrated and was beginning to doubt my new purchase. I always had better luck with natural lighting so why not just stick with that, I said to myself. Then my wonderful SO mentioned 2 little words that changed my focus (pun intended). White balance. White balance? Ooooohh, the camera has to be told that the lighting in the photos is from flourescent bulbs because, in essence, different kinds of lighting have an effect on the colors in your subject. Somehow I knew this but I never really thought about it in depth before. So, I pulled out the Nikon D40 bible that I had shoved in my camera bag, thinking I would never read all of that. I turned to the white balance section and sure enough, there is a setting for flourescent lighting. Now I was starting to feel pretty dumb about all of this. Those gremlin voices were screaming, “Geesh Karen, you’ve been taking photographs for how many years??” So, I let them have their say and just chalked it up to a learning experience. So, without further ado, here are my latest experiments.