Grey Card

A bit of playing with the new K10D and I can see how a grey card will help me for indoor low light portraits, especially in my house which has a lot of low energy bulbs. Can anyone recommend places to get grey cards from? I don't have a local camera shop.

When I need proper colour correction I use a QPcard ( www.qpcard.com ). Cheap, portable and good.
Generally for WB I make use of an Expodisc - which is also excellent, but expensive

Other than that... I use Silkypix's Skin Tone colour correction and that works 90% of the time

Matt

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=140238904477

I use the Douglas Photographer's Grey Card.

Check it our here.

Interesting reading in some of those links. What works best for those of you that do this with things like low light indoor photography. I tried a quick and dirty test on a raw image picking a grey part of the picture and the result was instantly a lot better than how the AWB had turned out the lighting. The K10D manual recommends a white card for setting the manual white balance, rather than grey. Obviously it seems easier to set this in camera. Wondering what works well for people and whether you use white or grey cards?

Both. The Douglas Grey card I use is 18% grey on one side (for exposure), and white on the other (for white balance).

By far the best tool for setting white balance accurately is the Expodisc but as Matt stated, it's not the cheapest accesory you'll buy. If you go for it, get the biggest you'll need, and use step down rings for the smaller lenses. I made the mistake of buying a smaller one, and bought the right one (larger) later. Consequently I now have two.

For setting the white balance, it doesn't matter if the card or subject is white or grey, as long as it really is white or grey and doesn't contain a colour, if you know what I mean.

A sheet of ordinary A4 paper works pretty well, though a proper grey card should be more accurate and be more evenly reflective. They also can be used for exposure readings and other things, so you get more than one tool in one. Traditionally they were 18% grey to match the camera's light meter, but some digital cameras can require darker.

Personally I wouldn't spend more than a very few pounds on a grey card. I got one from the eBay seller I mention above that seems to be good. It is darker than 18%, by the way.

Apparently the top-notch cards are coloured all the way through the material so the effect remains correct even if the surface becomes worn. But I wouldn't have thought it's worth paying a lot of money unless you are a professional or very rough with your cards.

I use the one that came free in the back of my Scott Kelby PS Elements book

well did a test with a white a4 sheet under indoor lighting, setting the manual white balance and I am more than happy with the results. the colour rendition is great after that. the k10d has no problem with daylight as the lighting source indoors, but under light bulbs not so good, but this manual white balance setting does the trick very nicely. I might try this out tonight, there's a race night here in the village.

On another lighting matter, I am finding so far that the K10D settings out of the box seem to produce quite light and sometimes blown highlights where there is a more light in the frame, but not excessive light to my eyes. I'm talking daylight here. Of course I can deal with that PP but anyone experienced that and adjusted camera settings accordingly?

It depends on the lens somewhat, and the metering mode, but yes you will get blown highlights sometimes unless you compensate. It happens the other way round, too, when you are able to increase the exposure without blowing anything.

No camera's metering is perfect and no camera can know what you want. The flashing highlight warning on the LCD display is very useful, so use that and the histogram and take further shots if necessary with some EV compensation dialed in.

You can make them look less harsh and intense, but you cannot recover detail from blown highlights in PP. So it's best not to blow them in the first place unless you want to sacrifice them in order to more highly expose another part of the scene.

I use one of these, being plastic they will still work when scratched.

http://www.digigrey.com/en_index.html

They are easily available in the UK, they are even on eBay.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Digi-Grey-Mini_W0QQitemZ290235624959QQihZ019QQcategoryZ386...

They work very well and are more robust then some of the card ones. Always in my camera bag.

Chris

Thirteen quid for a grey credit card? That's a bit much, innit?

You only have to buy it once Pete.

Once you start to use one it's amazing how much more is revealed in circumstances you wouldn't think of as having a colour cast, inside a wood for instance. Just take one frame with the card in shot, in Photoshop use the Gamma eye dropper tool in the Levels dialogue box (the middle one) and click on the card, and instantly correct the colour balance.

Chris

I know a grey card can be useful, but still that is a rip-off price. Even if you do just buy one.

I bought a Kodak (remember them) Gray Card (note US spelling) some 30 years ago and still using it today. Its 8" x 10" size, Grey side reflects 18% of the light falling on it (described as middle grey or Zone V).

The reverse side is White which reflects in Kodak's words "about 90%".

It was priced then as $6.50, a small fortune thirty years ago, but over the years it works out as less than 22 cents a year!