Of all of the prizes from the 2008 Photograph of the Year contest, I’ve received the most positive feedback on the ColorRight prizes. If you’re the type of photographer that shoots in raw and fixes white balance in post production, picking up a ColorRight of your own may be a good idea. With light changing all the time, it’s hard to get the right color balance in camera, and with evolution of digital photography, we can tweak the temperature of our photographs more than even before.

But why spend all that time playing around in post processing when you can get it right “in-camera”? ColorRight is a lens filter-like tool that can help you do just that. Basically, you place it over the end of your dSLR and take a sample photo. This gives your camera an accurate reading of the temperature of the light. Once your camera knows what the lighting conditions are, you’ll have an accurate white balance for the rest of your photographs (or at least until the lighting changes, when all you have to do is switch to manual focus, change your camera settings to “custom white balance,” and take another sample photo).

It really couldn’t be easier. If you can change the white balance settings on your camera, you can use ColorRight. Take a look at how easy it really is:

If you won’t take my word for it, check out what a couple of our own members have to say about ColorRight:

squirl033 - It works! What can I say? It’s as easy as they say… you simply set your lens for manual focus, place it over the lens, and snap a picture. Then tell your camera to use the white balance setting from that photo, and you’re automatically set up for the light you’re working with. I tried it indoors under both fluorescent and standard incandescent lighting, and in both cases, the results were vastly better than simply setting the white balance with the mode selector. Perhaps not quite as good as manually setting the WB with an 18% gray card, but a lot faster and easier. I shoot mainly outdoors, and use almost exclusively natural ambient light, but this little gizmo is just the ticket for those times when I’m shooting indoors and don’t want my photos to come out with a yellow or green cast!

If the recommendation from the winner of the PhotographyCorner.com 2006 Photograph of the Year contest doesn’t convince you, how about one from the only person who placed in the top 10 finalists in all three of the past 3 Photograph of the Year contests?

MelB - I have to say it’s one of the best value prizes I’ve won in a long time. The ability to get white balance right in camera has always eluded me, and shooting RAW and processing in ACR was the only way I’d been able to make corrections after the fact. Since buying the new Canon 5D Mk II, I have had to shoot in JPG, since I don’t yet have enough space to store the files in RAW format, and white balance was being an absolute beast! By using the ColorRight before starting a shoot, I’ve been able to get that white balance perfect every time. I’m teaching now, and show my students the wonder of ColorRight as well. Hopefully some will see the usefulness of this piece of equipment. It’s handy to use, fits neatly into my camera bag, is hard wearing, and very tough. I love it!

Between Rocky & Mel, they’ve brought home over $8,000 in prizes from the past 3 Photograph of the Year contests. They won their ColorRight. If you want one, though, you’ve gotta buy one. Luckily for you, you won’t have to pay full price. For a limited time, you can get a ColorRight of your very own for $79! But only through this link, and only for a limited time. For more information on ColorRight, check out their website at www.colorright.com, and to order your own for a mere $79, you’ve gotta click here.

Of course, if you prefer, you can carry around a bulky 18% gray card or white card and try to do it that way…