What white balance setting?

[Mamsoth]

I have always left the white balance for my cameras alone but I'm curious, what is the best setting or more to the point how can you work out what would be the best setting for any given camera?

[Shibby]

For normal photography, the white balance should technically be set to a custom white balance for the given conditions at the time. This can be done using an 18% grey card. However, by shooting in RAW you can easily adjust the white balance after-the-fact. This is guesswork though, the only way to get a truly correct white balance is with the fore-mentioned grey card.

With astrophotography, you should always be shooting in RAW. The white balance settings are usually saved along with the file. Programs like DSS can use these settings, although I'm unsure myself what's ideal (see this thread).

[Mamsoth]

Cheers for the help Shibby