Using a grey card: I haven't been satisfied with some of the white balance results I get when I have used a grey card (I use Lightroom). My white balancing seems to be better when I...

ESKP

I haven't been satisfied with some of the white balance results I get when I have used a grey card (I use Lightroom). My white balancing seems to be better when I eyeball it. Has anyone else had the same experience? Are the results much different between different brands of grey cards?

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

I don't use light room, but I do use Adobe Camera RAW in Elements 14 for my RAW photos (which is all that I shoot). I find that the ACR presets are usually to my liking for outdoor shots. Indoors, with mixed light, I will often use the eyedropper on objects I know are white and I seldom like the results because they colors are colder than I like so I warm them up a bit. I find the same with the portraits I shoot where I will ask the victim (umm, make that subject) to hold a pure white card for the first photo. When I click that white card on in ACR I wind up the same results as I already related and I wind up warming up the white balance -- who wants bluish skin tones, unless your a smurf?

Linary Loc: UK

ESKP wrote:

I haven't been satisfied with some of the white balance results I get when I have used a grey card (I use Lightroom). My white balancing seems to be better when I eyeball it. Has anyone else had the same experience? Are the results much different between different brands of grey cards?

How do you use your grey card in Lightroom to achieve white balance? Are you shooting raw or jpeg?

My reason for asking is that their are different ways of using the card in LR, and results differ.

ESKP

I only shoot RAW. After using a grey card I use the eye dropper on the grey card.

ESKP

Great input. What is the advantage of using white over grey?

Linary Loc: UK

ESKP wrote:

Great input. What is the advantage of using white over grey?

All photolife is balanced on "50%" grey. (This 50% varies all over the shop, but most shades of grey work well - even better if you can use the same grey each time as in a grey card.) If you use a white card, you could easily be trying to achieve white balance by using an overblown white, this does not work well

rwilson1942 Loc: Houston, TX

What WB setting do you have your camera on?

ESKP

rwilson1942 wrote:

What WB setting do you have your camera on?

I shoot RAW and usually have it on auto when I am shooting outdoors.

Linary Loc: UK

ESKP wrote:

I only shoot RAW. After using a grey card I use the eye dropper on the grey card.

OK, right method, now it's down to your own perception. Using the grey card will give you a starting point, and most of the photos you shoot, if you use the same grey, will give you that same start point. I like my images to be slightly warm, so having a baseline to work from, it is easy to add a couple of hundred degrees kelvin to warm up the photo in a fairly consistent way.

rgrenaderphoto Loc: Hollywood, CA

Linary wrote:

How do you use your grey card in Lightroom to achieve white balance? Are you shooting raw or jpeg?

My reason for asking is that their are different ways of using the card in LR, and results differ.

Your take a digital image of your 18% grey card, and use the WB Dropper took to adjust WB.

Watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ho_C2ZvOzJk

The color checker is great, but you can accomplish the same result with a grey card

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

Linary wrote:

All photolife is balanced on "50%" grey. (This 50% varies all over the shop, but most shades of grey work well - even better if you can use the same grey each time as in a grey card.) If you use a white card, you could easily be trying to achieve white balance by using an overblown white, this does not work well

They are usually calibrated for 18% grey, not 50!!

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

ESKP wrote:

I haven't been satisfied with some of the white balance results I get when I have used a grey card (I use Lightroom). My white balancing seems to be better when I eyeball it. Has anyone else had the same experience? Are the results much different between different brands of grey cards?

Is your display profiled? Are you looking at your screen when you say you get better results eyeballing it, or are you looking at prints made by a lab?

bdk Loc: Sanibel Fl.

Gray cards are 18% gray, that is whats being reflected back to the camera.
I use one when IM shooting indoors. You have light from windows, LED lights, fluorescent sometimes all mixed together, the card fixes that.

Ive had no problems with it, once I got the hand of using it. IN my case I need the card to be at least 6 to8 feet away from the camera.

Linary Loc: UK

speters wrote:

They are usually calibrated for 18% grey, not 50!!

I agree, but they are also available at 13%, 18%, 25% and 50%. I use 50% which in LR sends most of my photos to the warmth I like. I have also noticed that many grey cards marked as 18% actually measure on a densitometer to be about 30% grey.

Some of the cheap versions can vary in colour even on the same card.

I worked for a company that printed thousands of these cards as a giveaway in a photo magazine, the quality control was fairly vigorous, but even so the variation was easily discernable.

The important thing about using a grey card is to use the same one as much as possible, and when replacing test it and see what it actually does.

a6k Loc: Detroit & Sanibel

Linary wrote:

..snip... I have also noticed that many grey cards marked as 18% actually measure on a densitometer to be about 30% grey.

Some of the cheap versions can vary in colour even on the same card. ..snip...

I am familiar with the use of a densitometer on negatives in which case the instrument measures a transmission value (less than 100%), the inverse of density, and then reads out in density. How are you using the instrument on an opaque, reflective card?

Are you able to meter the incident light vs the reflected light? Or are you referring to the resulting image in your image file as shown on a monitor? I'm just a little confused here.

Thanks.

btw, is it "grey" or "gray"? I see it both ways when I "Google" it.