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When is a colour card not a colour card – Grey Cards

how not to set white balance

I see on the forums, YouTube and general internet sources a lot of confusion about setting a custom white balance.

Custom Profile

The main issue I see is that people are setting colour white balance using a grey card. This is potentially wrong. A grey card is calibrated 18% grey in order for you to get your metering correct. A colour checker card to set white balance has a neutral grey or white, ie the red green and blue channels are balanced.

Now you can buy 18% grey neutral grey cards, so these can be used for exposure and for setting white balance, but do not assume a grey card is neutral!

How to use also generates some debate. First thing is to get the lighting and exposure right. In the top picture, I was setting a fairly simple lighting set up. I had the model hold my colour balanced grey card white I tweaked the lighting and exposure. Do not take the white balance reading until you are setup, changing the lights and exposure can change the white balance. The picture here has a number of issues, but the biggest is that the cheap studio provided trigger is not syncing correctly with my camera thus the dark area at the bottom.

Step one, setup your shot, get the lighting, exposure all how you want.

Step two, take a photo of the subject with the colour checker, white balance card in the shot.

Step three – this is where we have some debate and it does not really matter. Either set a custom white balance using that shot in camera so that all your future shots are correct, or in your tethering software so everything looks correct. Or after the shoot most RAW software allows you to sync the corrected balance that shot to the other shots. Generally you edit that shot, do a custom white balance using the card in the shot, then sync the white balance settings across the other shots.

One last thing to consider; if like me you have custom import profiles that set a particular look, these may overwrite the colour balance, as may any other development profile you apply.

Oh and we are talking RAW, JPG bakes the colour temp into the file, it needs to be right.

What do I use and how? Well I have a couple of small white balance cards scattered across several camera bags as well as a A4 colour checker in my largest bag, so I always have something with me. As to how I use, well its naughty of me but I am not consistent.

When doing a shoot I am often in a manual white balance setting, using a card for important shots, then syncing things up at the end. It is an area I need to improve on.

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More Autumn Light

After spending a week resting and several days in bed, due to the dreaded COVID, I have finally started to get a bit more energy.

Ted the Greyhound has been desperate for a decent walk so finally this weekend, I got up early and with a Nikon Z7 and 35mm f/1.8 lens over my shoulder and we went for a stroll.

There was a touch of low mist, and early warm light which made the day look lovely, so I could not resist taking a few snaps. This square image I cropped to post on Instagram.

This was the limit to my photography this weekend. I did have a shoot all booked but luckily I managed to get the location and model to slip by a week. I wanted to have two weeks clear from my last positive COVID test before I risked anyone else’s health.

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Autumn

The seasons turn and we are now into Autumn.

As late summer turns to Autumn the light turns, and once again we grab the camera and walk round the village documenting the wonderful light.

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The boring 50mm lens

Nikon Z7 50mm f/1.2

Most of us photographers use zooms, for a lot of my professional work I use zooms. When shooting a wedding its generally a 24-70mm f/2.8 on one body and a 70-200mm f/2.8 on another, with a fast 50mm in the bag for when the light levels drop.

Sometimes for personal work I use a simple Leica with either a 35mm f/2 or 50mm f/1.4, I also sometimes adopt that simple approach when using my high resolution Nikon Z7 for portraits, using the Nikkor Z 50mm f/1.2 and Z 35mm f/1.8.

This simple image was just with my Nikon Z7 and a 50mm f/1.2 wide open. A simple but very pleasing portrait.

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My Queen

For many of us, in the UK, Canada and Australia, and the other Commonwealth realms she headed. She was the only head of state we have every known.

She was not known as a photographer, but often carried her little Leica with her on state visits. Documenting the many people and places she visited.

Whether you are a republican or monarchist we can say she dedicated her life to service.

Where I live she visited in 1978 where we got a glimpse of the queen. Years later I had the privilege of photographing her son the then Prince of Wales. There was a bunch of us photographers trying to get the image we wanted, and he knew exactly what to do so we got the photographs we wanted. Those slides are currently in the archive of our local paper.

The Queen will be missed, she served her people well and now that responsibility falls on her son.

Rest our Queen, and long live the King

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System Cameras and third party support – Canon

Nikon Z7 Z 35mm f/1.8 with Profoto B10Plus and large shoot through brolly for fill light

Sony reached their current status by embracing third parties, it took a while but now we have lens, flashes etc available from a broad range of suppliers.

Sony and Fuji, and the L alliance with Leica, Panasonic together with Olympus have very large well established systems.

Canon and Nikon are the new kids on the block for mirrorless. While both are the joint kings of the SLR realm and have been since the 1960’s, they are new to high end mirrorless and are building their systems quickly. There has been a lot of chat about whether these will remain closed systems or welcome third parties.

Well now it seems we know. Canon have issues legal notices to a number of lens manufacturers to stop them from producing lens for the RF mirrorless mount, while we see the first authorised lens from Tamron for Nikon, and we see Nikon executives, carrying the little Zfc with cute Voigtlander primes on the front.

I feel this is sending the wrong signal from Canon, whilst their high end L glass for the new mount has been good the rest is certainly not near the quality of the Nikon Z S branded glass, or Sony’s G and GM glass. Certainly if I was getting into photography now for full frame I would look at Nikon and Sony not Canon. If you have the budget then go Canon for the rest of us Sony have the bigger range and Nikon are knocking it out of the park with their Z lens. If you are into your cropped sensor then neither Nikon or Canon have much to offer from themselves and you are better off looking at Fuji.

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Talking down, leading to a spiral down

We all see it, people posting videos on YouTube to get views; camera brand A is going under, brand B is being sold, only Sony has a future. There is a toxic attitude around cameras with their fans pushing the idea, their brand is the only one.

We are now seeing camera news sites, picking up these comments and posting them as ‘news’ reinforcing these ideas. It’s a toxic circle and it makes people hold back from their next purchase.

The Japanese government is not going to let a large camera manufacturer fail. Olympus proved that, and they still have a group of loyal fans on the wait list for their latest pro camera.

Despite what us photographers think, traditional photography is on the way out. People are now using phones, and drones. They want simple cameras with video features like the Nikon Z30 and Sony’s ZV-E10.

There is always going to be people like me who want a decent system camera but we are few and far between, and its going to get to be an expensive hobby, but please lets support each other and are choices not talk the industry down.