Can anyone give me a basic explination of how adjusting the white balance on my DLSR will affect the picture??

Answer 1

Since the explaination is long and requires examples I am giving you a good link for that info...
http://www.photocritic.org/2007/white-balance/

Answer 2

this is as simple as i can make it without being too long.
any picture is the product of the source light as everything you or the camera can see is only a reflection of this light.
if the light has more blue in it the picture will appear cold or hard and white will look a little blue ( you might want to use this to give say a funeral a sad appearance, reduce colour saturation as well)
if it has more red the picture will appear warm and white will look a little red (you may want to use this to give say a fair ground a cheery appearance, increase colour saturation as well ) adjusting the balance can remove or add to the colour cast.
finally try setting the colour balance to daylight get some items coloured and white take a picture outside in daylight then take a picture ( still set to daylight ) indoors lit only by tungsten light bulbs and see the difference. auto is usually ok since you can correct easily using software.

Answer 3

I'll try to give you a simple explanation to get you on your way 'til you are ready to research further.
Different lights burn at different temperatures, measured on the Kelvin scale. When your camera is on the daylight or (sun) setting it is balanced for the light given off by the sun or any bulb balanced to that spectrum. If you use the daylight setting and experiment you will see that for instance the regular bulbs in your household lamps will photograph warm and yellow, streetlights, which are most often sodium vapor will appear orange and fluorescent bulbs burn green. All of these should have little symbols on the dial, just look in your instruction manual to see what they are. If used correctly the different modes can be productive and creative digitally although back when us older guys used film it was a bit easier I think, such as if we wanted to shoot daylight film in an environment lit with fluorescent we would put a pink filter over the lens to compensate and using tungsten film at dusk would give intense blue skies with basically neutral tones on a subject such as a building lit with tungsten or sodium vapor lighting. I have at times lite buildings with Q-beams or headlights using tungsten film giving me neutral color on my subject and dramatic blue sky. I hope this helps. With digital it's free to look so just try different manipulations while taking notes for further use. Hope this helped.
Chris

Answer 4

I don't know how to explain it, but my suggestion would be to take out your DSLR camera, and take several pictures of the same subject, while manually adjusting the white balance. That way, you can see for yourself how it impacts your pictures, and whether or not you like the results.

That's one of the beauties of digital photography: You don't have to pay for film processing, so you can take many different pics experimenting without impacting your wallet...

Answer 5

It'll give the image a different tint.