cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Shouldn't and what actually happens are often at odds with each other. Snow is hard to get right. The only worse thing, IMHO, is a bride in white next to a groom in black. Hey, that's why they made PhotoShop!

paulrph1 Loc: Washington, Utah

Sorry but I have taken to many pictures of snow that turned out grey. Did I give a tonation to the amount of grey? that will vary with overcast, shade, sunlight etc.

NorCal Bohemian

"The grey card is to determine white balance."
Not true! The grey card is calibrated for only one thing - 18% grey. A grey card IS NOT color neutral! A light meter can only determine one thing - 18% grey. If you take your meter reading off of the grey card, for that given light, aperture setting, shutter speed setting and ASA (oops, I mean ISO), you will render that 18% grey tone correctly (This is also known as Zone 5 in the Zone system). If you want that tone rendered lighter or darker - that's when you change your camera settings.
For accurate White Balance - you need to use a specially made white balance target - such as those made by X-Rite. This target will be color neutral. A white sheet of writing paper is designed to look white - but in reality is made up of different components, such as clay and titanium brighteners - that usually have a slight color bias - purposely designed to be imperceptible to the eye, although they are not imperceptible to the camera! If you set your white balance using a color biased target - you will get color biased images! From the X-Rite website description of their "Colorchecker White Balance Target : "the ColorChecker Custom White Balance target is a scientifically engineered, absolute neutral white reference that prevents color shifts and provides precise, uniform surface that is spectrally neutral – in any lighting condition."
X-rite sells a small "ColorChecker Passport" that contains white balance, grey targets and color targets - all in a pocket size package for $99!

NorCal Bohemian

"Hey, that's why they made PhotoShop!"
No, that's why they make light meters and fill lights!

cjc2 Loc: Hellertown PA

Well thank you for your lesson on color balance and photography OH GREAT ONE!

Welcome to UHH. Please read the topic through before commenting. What you can do in a studio and what you can do in a poorly lit gym with multiple light sources are a bit different.

photoman022 Loc: Manchester CT USA

I take a general incident reading and use that for my exposure. I used to use the 18% grey card, with a REFLECTED reading, but I learned that just taking the incident reading gave me spot on exposures all of the time.

NorCal Bohemian

I DID read through the topic before commenting! I commented on "The only worse thing, IMHO, is a bride in white next to a groom in black. Hey, that's why they made PhotoShop!" Sorry, I didn't read your bio info to see that you haven't shot professionally. Iv'e shot well over 500 weddings, with an average billing of over $5,000 - 30-40 years ago! I was chief photographer of a chain of three studios - that employed about 20 photographers during the season. We shot at a ratio of 1 to 2 or 1 to 3 - which is to say, that one out of every two to three exposures would be in the album - or a wall portrait. There was no excuse - ever - for a less than perfect exposure. Eye blinks are the only Uncontrollable - and the only reason that we would take one or two exposures of a group!
Weddings do not a full time career make - and so the bulk of my weekday career was spent as a technical representative for some of the major players in the industry - analog and then digital- in photography, the Graphic Arts, and the Printing industry. As such, I worked with some of the top photographers in Northern California - in that I was responsible for assuring that the digital backs, lighting equipment, view cameras etc. that I sold - delivered what was promised. The high end retailers, book publishers and catalog companies that were usually the clients of said photographers - often brought me in as a trouble shooter or to suggest methods to achieve given visual marketing goals - which almost always involves critical color management. If that logo color or product color is not spot on - heads will roll!
Well, there you have it! Far more than I originally planned on offering about myself. I didn't want the post to be about myself - just making what I would hope would be a self evident statement on a forum devoted to learning and sharing photography tips!
While my comment was more aimed at a professional - I stand by it for an amateur, also! The craft of photography is a wonderful thing to try to master. I know more than most in the fields of photography and image reproduction - but I am by no means a professor of photography or believe for a minute that I know it all. I think the same can be said for a professor at RIT or the Brooks Institute. It's simply way too big and technical of a field for anyone to know everything. My criticism lies strictly in the vein of - defaulting to short cuts will not improve your basic photographic skills. No offense was meant.

Kuzano

The palm of your hand or a field of green grass can reasonably substitute for a grey card, rendering a reading similar to using the card. (Once you have an understanding of why and how to use the grey card)

Another alternate method that works well is to learn, understand and use the Sunny 16 rule for exposure.

If one harks back to the little instruction sheets that used to come in the KODAK 35mm film boxes, you've already been exposed to (pun intended) to the basic concepts of Sunny 16.

A good photographer, familiar and astutely using Sunny 16, and/or properly using a hand held light meter and grey card or substitutes can get properly exposed pictures without an in camera meter.

Add in a fundamental understanding of exposure compensation.

True manual photography.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Darkroom317 is right about snow, metering the grey card will cure the problem you talk about, while metering the scene as a whole will produce the grey snow syndrome.

The bride and groom is a different problem, and is not really one of metering, other than it will require very precise metering. It's a problem of dynamic range. People all know that cameras like the D800 have very high dynamic range, but don't necessarily understand that is only when using very low ISO values. Shoot the wedding couple at ISO 100, and nail the exposure, might get detail in both the gown and the tux. But if you shoot it at ISO 3200 where even the D800 has less than 7 stops of dynamic range, even nailing the exposure won't get details in both highlights and shadows.

And you are dead on right that it will require manipulation of the tone values with PhotoShop or some other editor! JPEG and prints only show about 7 stop of dynamic range at best, so even if the camera captured 11 or 12 it has to be carefully coaxed out of the RAW data!

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

And yet you missed the point entirely the first time, and then missed it again in your follow up post of boasts.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

That is what happens when using a reflected meter measuring a scene with a lot of snow.

That is not what happens if either an incident light meter is used or if a grey card is metered with reflected meter. In these cases the meter does not know you have a bright subject, it only knows how much light there actually is.

OldEarl Loc: Northeast Kansas

Bingo.

When I began doing photos for publication I worked with a couple more experienced photographers and they had standardized the light requirements for every major venue on campus. We did what we could and developed a sense of indoor light similar to the outdoor guides from the Great Yellow Father. It actually worked in my commercial advertising and PR business as well and I remember instructing my son on this when he was in high school.

This finger in the wind approach is only good for awhile and as long as you never wear sunglasses. Once you lose it, metering is necessary and you need a Sekonic, a Luna-Pro and a spot meter. I suppose a 300 on a TTL would double as a spotmeter.

The older I get, the less I say I'll take care of it in the darkroom. Post production fixes cannot go beyond what is there and light is what it is all about.

Apaflo Loc: Anchorage, Alaska

Why not do it better (do it right!).

Point your camera at the subject, push the shutter button, ignore the image though and look at the histogram with a highlight display enabled. In about one second you get better information and more of it than packing around any number of light meters can provide.

NorCal Bohemian

No, I didn't - but you clearly missed my point! Hey, I thought that this was a forum for people interested in sharing pertinent and technical information to become better Photographers. Clearly, I was wrong! Yeah, who needs camera skills when you can just correct it all in Photoshop! Good luck to you all!
Signing off!

mcveed Loc: Kelowna, British Columbia (between trips)

What?!?