Have your grey card?
by John St. Germain on Aug.01, 2009, under Photography
This is the Lastolite Ezybalance. I shop at Amazon for my gear and use pricechirp.com to track prices.
What are grey cards and why are they important? In the studio when you are working with strobes, you may not care. But when you are out in the field, a grey card is invaluable in getting the correct color.
A grey card is exactly what it’s name implies. It is a grey card (18% black–which is the what camera light metering systems are set to meter correct exposure). Most every digital camera has an automatic white balance, but it may not always get the color right and having a grey card with you means correct color every time.
I shoot raw and have never mastered setting white balance in the camera with the grey card so correcting WB is part of my post process work-flow. I just leave the camera on auto, have my model hold the grey card at the start of the shoot and every time the light changes. (Partly cloudy days can be a real pain as clouds move in and out blocking the sun, but as long as you have a shot with both sun and clouds, your covered.)
The image below, of Shauna, shows why I don’t trust auto balance. My cam may have attempted to balance for shade (the blueish tint), but after I use the white balance eye-dropper tool and touch it to the grey card, her skin tone warms and the dull blue is gone. I would then copy this setting to all the shots in this group. (Until the next balance card shot)
There are a lot of options for grey cards, but the nice thing about the Ezybalance is it’s washable and collapses into a easy carry pouch. I had a 8×10 paper card a while back, but lost it somewhere. Any option you choose, I think you will be pleased with the results.
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