Use a coffee filter for simple white balance
Your camera is pretty good about detecting what is "white" in an image, but it frequently needs help. For example, if you have blue images in some rooms, and orange images in others, you need to adjust your white balance. One way to do this is to set your camera to the Custom white balance setting and then choose an image that you shot in the same lighting conditions. You can buy professional white balance cards (typically called Grey Cards) and you can correct the white balance in software, and those are certainly valid in professional lighting situations, but for me, I just use a white coffee filter.
Hold the white coffee filter over the lens, and point it into the same scene that you'll be taking pictures in. Take a picture (you might have to switch off auto-focus on some lenses before your camera will take the picture).
Go into your camera settings and set the White Balance to Custom, then choose the image you just took as the image to use. On Canon systems, this is a two step process; one click for Custom, another menu selection for the image. Check your camera manual to find out how to set a custom white balance.
Give it a try. Coffee filters are cheap, portable, and will give you amazing results!
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