I started a flickr set dedicated to rat sightings. It can be a representation of a rat like this one below, or a real rat like the one below that.

I took a bunch of photos and posted these two photos, each with white balance and exposure problems.
I think MG_8451 is the best, pictured below, but not perfect. Too much dark, not enough light.
The environment I was shooting in was AMS’s large cutting table in the center of the room. There were several halogen bulbs pointing at the subject, and a large cluster of florescent lamps overhead. My camera was set on a mini tripod that couldn’t be fully stabilized. I set the white balance to AWB and snapped a shot of the gray card. I set the custom WB to this profile setting, refocused manually and snapped a shot. The color seemed okay, but the histogram was off. I took a series of 10 more shots with white balance bracketing and exposure bracketing, trying to get the darks lower and the lights brighter, but none of them turned out as good as that first shot (MG_8451). The exposure was 1/100 with an F-stop of 7.1, ISO 400, shooting in Adobe RGB. Would it have made a difference to shoot at a higher ISO? Or were the lighting conditions such that attaining a proper exposure was out of the question?

Digital Imaging first assignment: take a picture with correct white balance.

I set my camera on a stool in my living room (next time I’ll use a tripod). The light coming through the window was soft sun. The paint on my wall is a very subtle shade that changes color depending on the kind of light in the room, so I thought it would be a good test for hue and tone. After reading the manual on how to set a custom white balance, I set my camera appropriately. I focused the camera on the gray card and made the shutter speed and aperture adjust automatically. I took the picture. The white balance information from that shot was stored in the camera. I manually re-focused the camera on the couch, set the camera to custom white balance (which uses the settings of the picture I just took), and snapped the shutter. Then I switched to automatic white balance and took another one. The difference is obvious. The color in the second one is much paler and grayer.

Custom white balance:

Auto white balance: