Here's a self portrait taken with a cheap digital camera, without flash.
I find that pictures taken of myself with a flash don't look so good. I have a very pale complexion and with the flash on it makes me look like Darth Sidious.
Not sure why the color is so distorted without the flash. The background is actually a white wall, but it looks red. Go figure.
3 Responses to "Self Portrait"
The color is like that because of the color temperature [en.wikipedia.org] of the light source. That is (probably) some form of incandescent light which shows up as orange (florescent is either green or blue, for instance though it can be manufactured in a “corrected” version that appears white). To correct that color you need to add blue. In the bad old days of film we had to use a tungsten filter (literally a blue piece of glass or plastic) to balance out that orange color. For a cool effect, take a photo outside at dusk, light the subject with a tungsten source (a table lamp), correct the image with a blue filter over the lens. The person will appear to be lit with white light and the deep blue sky and evening light will get ridiculously blue. Looks cool!
That is an impressive white balance your camera has. I've never seen anything that poor. If you're worried about the flash making you look like Darth Sidious, you may want to consider using a bounce flash or a diffuser so that the flash is less direct and harsh. That should sort out the nasty colouration issues.
If you use an SLR on a tripod with a relatively long exposure time you might get nicer effects without a flash, but I suspect the very dark background colour of the “white wall” is caused by there simply not being enough light reaching it so that approach won't improve things much.
Ooooh - you handsome devil!