White balance

[Roger Hicks]

Kodak grey card works when one has time ... sorry Roger I know you disagree.

Dear Stewart,

No, I don't disagree at all. But so does a sheet of white paper. The big differences (apart from price) are first, that colour variations tend to be clearer with white paper than with grey cards (Kodak cards are fine but some 'grey cards' do have colour casts) and second that you can take WB readings in weaker light off paper with an 80-90% reflectance than you can off a grey card.

@ John: Yes, the ExpoDisc is back on sale, offered by the grandson of the late inventor, who meant it to be used for incident light metering with TTL meters: I have both the old and new versions. It's very good but once again it's no better than a sheet of white paper. There's also a Brno lens-cap with a white bobble on it, and some rather nasty Chinese knock-offs of the ExpoDisc where you can actually see the colour casts on the disc.

Cheers,

R.

 

[JohnTF]

I seem to recall in the old days we sometimes shot a photo of a gray card on the first frame for the printer to set the color.

I noticed when I started, rather late, with RA4 printing, that a lot of color film seemed to evolve toward very similar settings, when my friends with labs prior to that seemed to rely on a lot of "channels" which were set up for particular films.

They used to do a lot of testing daily to get the machines synced to the testing material they bought from Kodak.

Process became a lot more "bullet" proof and easier to dial in correction by the time I started wet color --

John

 

[wolves3012]

This sounds like a fine way to establish a repeatable standard for instruments. However, I don't carry around any calcium carbonate or white tiles when I'm out shooting. So I don't think it helps with Roger's original point, as I interpret it: how do we know, as photographers, when we have judged the correct white balance in our photos?

You missed my point, which I made in another post. I wasn't suggesting carrying around a calibration tile.

Short answer: you can't, there's no absolute. If you get the result you wanted, it's correct within the constraints of reality and creativity.