Can White Balancing be turned OFF with the a900/a850?

[XKAES]

Seems like a simple Yes or No question to me.

Can White Balancing be turned OFF with the a900/a850?

[SnappyMilt]

Procedure for the a900

1. Press the Fn button

2. Cursor over to the box just above the number of exposures remaining (one up from the bottom on the right)

3. Press the cursor center button

There you will find the following selections: AWB, Daylight, Shade, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Flash, Custom Color Temperature, and three stored custom settings. All of these selections can be individually adjusted.

[SnappyMilt]

Sorry, I just re-read your question and I didn't answer it specifically. The answer is "No". One of the white balance settings must be selected, and "Off" is not a setting. I am not sure what it means to turn white balance off, and I don't know of a camera that has that setting. Would that be black & white if white balance is off? 

[XKAES]

Setting the camera to B&W does not turn white balancing OFF.  I guess it is not an option because no one needs it.

[Pieter]

Trying to keep us occupied with riddle games during dark winter months spent in lockdown? 😅

[XKAES]

That's probably a good way to look at it, but at least I've figured out that I can get B&W IR shots from my a850 without modification:

 

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[SnappyMilt]

Just curious -- what is the purpose of turning off white balance? In what situations would you want to turn it off, and what is the impact on the image? 

[XKAES]

That's what I'm trying to figure out.

[VTC]

Shoot RAW if you don't want that pesky and troublesome white balance annoyance screwing things up for you.

[XKAES]

I'll give that a try, although I doubt it will make a difference as the WB still has to be set at something from AWB, FLASH, DAYLIGHT, TUNGSTEN, etc. -- even in B&W mode.

[Pieter]

What does a picture without white balance even look like?

[XKAES]

Whatever the factory sets it to look like.

[Pieter]

Isn't that the same as custom white balance with everything set to 0?

[XKAES]

Custom WB only deals with two colors, not all three. 

However UniWB -- which I had never heard of -- apparently answers my question.  There is a lot on the WEB about, but I don't know if I will go down that road.  Nice to know it's there though!