White Balance Card

Does anyone know where I can get one?

What are you looking for, Cleo. You talking the Greg McBeth color chart?

Yes, that's it! If I was alert when posting I would have requested the right thing! LOL

I read in PhotoGraphic Magazine about a white balance/grey scale "card" that actually is a collapsable reflector with black, 18% grey & white strips to let you not only adjust for 18% grey but for white & black as well.

It's in the April 2005 issue. Looks sweet AND practical!

I was looking around for them once, Cleo. B&H has them, amongst other places...all priced similarly.

Cleo, is this what you want? It's what I use. Works great!

http://www.photovisionvideo.com/target.html

Hmm, looks good. But I saw this card once, it looked easy to have "just in case".

I know Carl shoots RAW, what do you shoot in Kix?

Cleo is this the card?

http://www.robertwhite.co.uk/Pictures/macbcc1.jpg

If so it the Gretag MacBeth Color Checker costs about £59

There are a number of types

Color Checker the industry standard A4 size array of 24 coloured squares for colour calibration and digital camera profiling

ColorChecker SG (Semi Gloss) is specifically designed for digital photography.

DC Colour checker - a larger digital camera target that has 237 patches in a 12cm x 20cm grid this covers 177 colours

Actually it was just grey, white & black. Then there was another that was just shades of grey.

This is a Gretag Macbeth one ...

http://usa.gretagmacbethstore.com/index.cfm/CFID/12723620/CFTOKEN/76007048/MenuItemID/291.htm

But I saw this card once, it looked easy to have "just in case".


It's not what you're looking for? It's the grey, white and black one. My problem with the McBeth card is it's just too small.

I shoot in JPEG mostly. Neither will have an effect on using this however.

You may find this convenient, Cleo

http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/whibal/index.html

That's it Carl! Thanks for that, you're the best even if you do bite!

Kix, I shoot mostly in jpeg but I have this really great shoot coming up. It is half present half work. As a gift, I got a NYC studio for my use all day for one day. On top of that, I booked a fashion shoot and am thinking of doing it there but in RAW.

A photographer friend of mine, who does fashion & such in the UK gave me a list of things he thinks I should have, so I was just searching them out.

Haven't decided if I should go RAW, I tend to shoot all weddings in jpeg large, and portraits the same way, but I think RAW might be better overall since that is what I have been hearing.

Any advice from anyone on this would be great.

Well RAW leaves out your saturation and other things..makes it look flat overall, as mentioned in other threads and such. So, unless you're going to do the post work, it's not worth it. It's not going to give you better quality in any way, just more post work options as you'll have a cleaner "palette" per se to work from.

Comparing the whibal cards to the targets, I personally would go with the target as it allows you to set white balance in camera and not need to do any post work unless you want or need to. My understanding is; if you use a card, or something that won't fill the whole frame you have to put it in PS and change things around there.

By using the larger targets that will fill the whole frame you can do a custom WB on the spot and not need to do it later on the PC, thus allowing more time to shoot.
The link I sent provides you with an instructional DVD. If you happen to purchase one that does not included one from another place such as adorama.com, let me know and I can lend you my DVD if you like. It's very instructive.

Personally if you're going to shoot a lot of images, shoot in JPEG.

Congrats on the new gigs coming up!!

Considering RAW vs JPG: http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/understanding-series/u-raw-files.shtml

From the article above: Possibly the biggest advantage of shooting raw is that one has a 16 bit image (post raw conversion) to work with. This means that the file has 65,536 levels to work with. This is opposed to a JPG file's 8 bit space with just 256 brightness levels available. This is important when editing an image, particularly if one is trying to open up shadows or alter brightness in any significant way.

This is true of the 16 bit. I attended a lecture earlier this month that talked about it. Basically you have more "grabbers" if you will to stretch out your pixels, thus providing a better quality image. Will this change likely be noticeable to most persons' eyes? Doubtful. Printers can't print in 16 bit so that's more saving and resaving you have to do and even MORE time at the PC. Additionally, this pertains to post work. It comes down to if you want to indulge in more post work or pre work. On the other hand, it's of an advantage to be able to have that option if it's needed. Pros and cons, pros and cons....

It boils down to the same thought as "do I have my film processed at the One Hour Photo shop or do I have a custom lab do my work for me" :)

If you're satisfied with the images that your camera produces right out of the camera, then just use JPG. It's definately easier.

But if you frequently do ANY post work to your images, the advantages of RAW begin to become more apparent.

Shooting in JPG and doing post processing work or shooting in RAW and doing post processing work is the question :)

Well, I'd hardly compare shooting JPEG to a one hour lab because I pre adjust my shots via exposure and WB and such.

Well, I'd hardly compare shooting JPEG to a one hour lab because I pre adjust my shots via exposure and WB and such.

and accept what the camera decides is right? That's my point. If you accept what the camera decides based on your input, fine. Nothing wrong with that. But if you are going to do any post work to fine tune the results, RAW gives you more data to work with.

Too many people think RAW is an easy way to avoid proper exposure and white balance. While there is a bit of truth there, that is NOT the reason to shoot RAW. I shoot RAW and preadjust my exposure and WB as well. The difference is that I don't want the camera deciding how much saturation, contrast, and sharpening to apply as a "canned" amount on every shot.

I'm not saying shooting in JPG is wrong and RAW is the best way to go. RAW is the best method for me and it has NOTHING to do with getting my exposure or white balance right the first time. There is SO much more to it than that.

You can shoot in raw, and record an action as you open the first raw image, apply what you think best suites the situation/setting and then do a batch with that action on all the other raw files for that situation then save the results as tiffs or what have you.

This way your not doing the same thing for 100 pictures, but you get custom settings for each shoot. Plus youve retained the 16bit info, and your not saving a jpg as a jpg again, increasing the artifacts.

And if the settings isnt good for every picture in the batch, you can go back and play with that one again.

And from my understanding, true the printer cant print the 16bit, but you have more info in the shadows that you can recover, so when you do go to print, the post processed file will show more in the output. I could be mistaken here.

I plan to shoot raw+jpg for weddings and other special shoots. This way I can use the jpgs, and if some need extra help, I have the raw to work from if I have to. Unless I find out I prefer to work with raw files of course.

and accept what the camera decides is right?


No. You can make in camera adjustments to the levels you want applied prior to shooting.

Yes, you can choose a predetermined white balance (and I know you do custom so that's good) and a predetermined exposure (and I assume you apply the necessary exposure compensations), but you can only tell it to boost saturation by x, sharpen by x, add contrast by x....a predetermined amount of correction which you have no way of knowing if that is correct for every situation.

As I said, if you're satisfied with the color saturation, contrast, and the amount of sharpening that you camera applies to your images for you and you don't do post processing adjustments for tonal qualities and sharpening, then you have no need to even consider shooting RAW. But if you are doing tonal adjustments, adjusting curves for contrast, and applying sharpening, RAW should be [u]considered[/b] because it gives you the ability to make those adjustments with MORE data than you will have if you shot the picture with jpg.

When you shoot in JPG mode, the camera takes the image in RAW mode THEN applies corrections, tosses out the unnecessary data, and produces the JPG result complete with the applied amount of compression based on the size of file chosen.