Auto exposure gave us accurate exposures for all normally-balanced scenes we shot. We could easily compensate for strongly backlit scenes by pressing the backlight button or switching to manual. If a subject is predominantly bright or dark, the AE shift does a good job adjusting for these extreme values.
You select white balance (WB) modes through menus. The default requires four steps, but you can move this and other buttons to an earlier menu page if you prefer. Our WB tests shooting a Macbeth ColorChecker chart revealed that manual WB is somewhat more accurate than auto. Manually white balancing provides a one-percent average variance from color neutral toward blue-green. Auto WB gave us a nine-percent average variance toward red-green. The included WB shift feature will get you even closer. The HC7 buffers its auto WB adaptation to different lighting conditions by taking about ten seconds to fully adjust.