Grey / Gray Cards - what to buy, how much to spend

[sheridant]

There seems to be a HUGE variance in price, this one at warehouse express is £60 - for a 3 colour peice of plastic

http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-macbeth-colour-checker-grey-scale-chart/p1011493

can anyone give me any guidance on getting a good and cheap one - or suggest a better solotion

Is an expodisc better?

Thank

[bb123]

these seem to be one of the better grey cards around .. just need to get around to ordering one ...http://www.rawworkflow.com/whibal/

[bb123]

or this one

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Premium-White-Balance-Photography/dp/B000HDFH6W

[mrgubby]

I'd heard somewhere that the inside of lowepro bags is 18% grey :)

[Bill Roberts]

I use the whibal card and it's excellent. But I must say the one on amazon (bb123's link) looks to be excellent value. I'm sure that whibal would tell you that theirs is super accurate in colour (and I'm sure it is) but I doubt you'd see much difference in the real world.

[sidxms]

Jessops do one for £7 I think

sid

[coldpenguin]

I'd heard somewhere that the inside of lowepro bags is 18% grey :)

I have heard that too.
However, (apart from the orange bits), my lowepro bag has two shades of grey.
[orion trekker II]

[Deckard]

or this one

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Digital-Premium-White-Balance-Photography/dp/B000HDFH6W

I've got one of those too for the rare times I use it.

[Dman]

I'd heard somewhere that the inside of lowepro bags is 18% grey :)

Not quite, but it still does a great job.

[david1701]

I know you get cleaning vloths that are 18% grey they could be a handy alternative

[Magellan]

A lot of camera bags which are green or blue are actualy 18% reflective (remember your camera sees in B&W)

[mr bizzare]

I got a white balancer with Amateur Photographer this month FREE takin it out on Sunday to try it out.

[Flash In The Pan]

I've got one of these (http://www.digitalimageflow.com/) - the company sell them on Fleabay

[swanseamale47]

A mate uses grey undercoat on a bit of hardboard, works a treat.

[shimbo]

If you search Google there is a Dulux paint mix code for 18% grey although looking at their standard color charts some of the greys look very close. Depends on what you want to use it for though. I've got some Kodak Grey cards but they are hard to use due to reflections etc and not big enough for most of my usage.

I recently bought a sheet of A1 Charcoal card from an art shop for £2 it's very close to mid grey, (checked with a Pentax Spotmeter 1/3rd stop diff) and white on the otherside. I bought it to check exactly what I was losing with a 2x and 1.4x converter..... seemed to be about 3 stops.... Ouch!!!!

shimbo

[Anorakus]

If you search Google there is a Dulux paint mix code for 18% grey

Not sure I'd want to paint my living room with it, even if it would make for accurate exposures :D

[gumbo-67]

i gor a free gray card on a mag last year maybe worth seeing if any mags have one on

[coldpenguin]

what is the difference to the camera of white balance or a grey card?

[swanseamale47]

In the old days togs would use grass or a grey-ish road to set exposure (still works fairly well) for setting the white balance you do need a neutral grey/white subject as any hint of colour will affect the finished pic slightly, although a lot depends on how critical your working.
I have seen proper grey cards with a huge difference in density one from another, obviously they can't all be 18% but how do you tell which is right in the shop.

[Bruce120]

These guys do WB lens caps. Got a couple work very well

http://www.linkdelight.com/

[Tracer]

I got a Mennon WB lens cap from fleabay for less than £5 including postage from Hong Kong! It came very promptly. I don't often use it but it is good for strange high intensity lighting indoors.

[HoppyUK]

There seems to be a HUGE variance in price, this one at warehouse express is £60 - for a 3 colour peice of plastic

http://www.warehouseexpress.com/buy-macbeth-colour-checker-grey-scale-chart/p1011493

can anyone give me any guidance on getting a good and cheap one - or suggest a better solotion

Is an expodisc better?

Thank

If you want accuate exposure, the histogram is better and more versatile than a grey card.

If you want white balance, any clean white surface is fine.

[Steep]

Amateur Photographer are giving away a "white balancer" in this weeks issue.

[zeugma]

I got a Mennon WB lens cap from fleabay for less than £5 including postage from Hong Kong! It came very promptly. I don't often use it but it is good for strange high intensity lighting indoors.

Fotobyte (UK) do the Mennon caps. There's a thread on POTN which shows mixed reviews. Someone there recommends coffee machine filters!

[EdBray]

I use one of these Lastolite Ezybalance (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lastolite-Ezybalance-Grey-White-Card/dp/B0009QZDL6) has a grey side and a white side, folds up into something small enough for your pocket!

[martint]

I use one of these:

http://www.bodoni.co.uk/product_info.php?products_id=497

A little more costly than a lot of options already listed above, but if you have CS3 or CS4 the speed at which you can colour correct images with the eye dropper tools when setting the black & white points along with the grey point makes it a great tool :)

[Holden Caulfield]

Dont be confused between grey cards and colour balance cards.

Grey cards like Kodak are used for exposure while colour balance cards are used for settin white balance,

This is one of the best white balance cards on the market

http://www.rawworkflow.com/whibal/

[coldpenguin]

I use one of these: you can colour correct images with the eye dropper tools when setting the black & white points along with the grey point makes it a great tool :)
Dont be confused between grey cards and colour balance cards.

Grey cards are used for exposure while colour balance cards are used for setting white balance,

Thanks you two, finally twigged!

[shimbo]

If you want accuate exposure, the histogram is better and more versatile than a grey card.

If you want white balance, any clean white surface is fine.

You have to be careful using white for WB it can easily burn out and have the correct value of 255R 255G 255B (or fairly close) even when the WB is miles out. Also you can't see a heavy bluecast in white properly, but it's very obvious in they grey areas.

shimbo

[martint]

Have a quick look at this video, it will show you how to use the card that I spoke about a few posts up

https://shop.colourconfidence.com/Videos/colorchecker/en/ColorChecker_EN_v2.0_html/

[HoppyUK]

You have to be careful using white for WB it can easily burn out and have the correct value of 255R 255G 255B (or fairly close) even when the WB is miles out. Also you can't see a heavy bluecast in white properly, but it's very obvious in they grey areas.

shimbo

I think that white is the best and easiest thing to use for white balance, when shooting JPEGs. And it is better than grey.

The world is full of white things, from ordinary bits of paper, to table cloths, to menus - all sorts of things already in situ and illuminated by the available ambient light. It is obvious is they are off white, cream or whatever. Much easier to assess than blue grey or warm grey etc.

Take any auto exposure picture and it will be rendered a mid tone grey with almost zero danger of error. And being white, it will have the maximum amount of RGB for the camera to make an accurate adjustment.

Canon recommends using white.

I am however only talking about setting custom white balance before picture taking in JPEG mode. In post processing, I quite agree that pure white is risky for the reasons you have alluded to. For this reason I have a small Kodak grey card in my bag and always try to include a quick snap with it somewhere in the corner of a test pic so that I can reference it when processing Raws.

[shimbo]

I suppose if it gets the correct result at the time of shooting that's OK. A slight problem with white and it has been well documented in the past with regard to film photography is that pure white rarely exists due to fluorescent dyes put in paper paint etc. The only white that existed for Ansel Adams was specular highlights, which obviously couldn't be measured ;-)

I find that bright galvanized steel such as scaffold tubes give a good visual indication if there's too much blue, you can even see it on a test shot on the camera screen. I just adjust the WB manually until the galvanizing looks gray. A lot of old lenses such as Vivitar's and Ricoh's tend to fool the Auto WB in the camera.

shimbo

[HoppyUK]

I suppose if it gets the correct result at the time of shooting that's OK. A slight problem with white and it has been well documented in the past with regard to film photography is that pure white rarely exists due to fluorescent dyes put in paper paint etc. The only white that existed for Ansel Adams was specular highlights, which obviously couldn't be measured ;-)

I find that bright galvanized steel such as scaffold tubes give a good visual indication if there's too much blue, you can even see it on a test shot on the camera screen. I just adjust the WB manually until the galvanizing looks gray. A lot of old lenses such as Vivitar's and Ricoh's tend to fool the Auto WB in the camera.

shimbo

I agree that if it works for you, that's all that matters :thumbs: I don't want to drag this out, but apart from that, I don't think any of what you have said above actually stacks up.

[shimbo]

I forget to mention that Nikon seem to prefer Grey for setting the white balance/colour casts. I've not used the latest version of Capture (NX2) because my camera isn't a Nikon, but the older version 4 had a dropper under Curves that sorted out the colour cast with just one click on a grey area. I tried it on a Kodak 10 step grey scale card once. It worked perfectly on all the greys and blacks with a reflective density of 0.5 and below, but added too much blue on anything above rising to an extra 30 units (0-255 values) on white. I don't know why it works on black but not white? Could be just the programming?

Used to work perfectly correcting casts taken under tungsten lighting, fixed with just one click even on jpegs ;)- I think the software was written by Nik so their own plugins probably do the same.

shimbo

[HoppyUK]

I forget to mention that Nikon seem to prefer Grey for setting the white balance/colour casts. I've not used the latest version of Capture (NX2) because my camera isn't a Nikon, but the older version 4 had a dropper under Curves that sorted out the colour cast with just one click on a grey area. I tried it on a Kodak 10 step grey scale card once. It worked perfectly on all the greys and blacks with a reflective density of 0.5 and below, but added too much blue on anything above rising to an extra 30 units (0-255 values) on white. I don't know why it works on black but not white? Could be just the programming?

Used to work perfectly correcting casts taken under tungsten lighting, fixed with just one click even on jpegs ;)- I think the software was written by Nik so their own plugins probably do the same.

shimbo

Setting custom white balance for shooting (with a white target) and correcting it in post processing (with a grey target) are two different things. See post #31, and the last paragraph :)

[sheridant]

thanks so much for your posts everyone - great help and advice indeed