Color Checker Passport... my new love!

I have been on the fence about getting one of these since they came out. I have been useing a color chart forever, as I used to print my own color work. But I could never pull the trigger on the passport. Till last week. OMG! It makes 90% of your post color work a 2 click process.

People seem to only want to talk about it as a white ballence tool. But that is "only the tip of the iceberg". Sure you shoot it and can have a choice of several white ballences to select from. At times "right" is not correct, and correct is not "right" so now you have a very easy way to obtain a ballence that works. Thats all well and good......

BUT!!! It will also adjust your HSL. Specific to the camera and lighting. If your light is not ballenced it can influense your colors hue/saturation/liminen​ce so not only will be WB be off but so will the colors charactoristics. Fixing it in one click is HUGE!!! The final image, you may not want with a neutral ballence, but it is a lot easier to get to what you want from neutral than it is from way to one side.

You will need to shoot a referance frame at eash set up. But most people chimp one or two anyway, so it is not really a big deal.

This is definatley something I wish I had picked up a long time ago. It is instantly a fixture in my bag.

Thanks for the information. You said it affects the HSL settings, does it also change the settings in the Calibration tab of the ACR?

I completly agree about the Passport Color Checker! I purchased one last year and just never really used it. I had purchased it along with a few other white balance targets / tools all aound the same time ad thought it was just too much trouble to use. At the time I was shooting with a D3x in my studio and the images were almost perfect out of camera with a simple gray card white balance. Now I have moved over to the Canon side I noticed a major change in my workflow to get the images the way I wanted them. I dusted off the Passport and WOW I got perfect looking exposers and great looking skin tones with the passport. I wished I would have used this when I first got it, it would have saved me a lot of time with my workflow in the past few months.....

If you dont have one of these tools- you need to get one!!!!

Welcome to the club! What took you so long?

Yea, the profile and and WB samples make this product soooooo nice.

cfcRebel wrote in post #13513357
Thanks for the information. You said it affects the HSL settings, does it also change the settings in the Calibration tab of the ACR?

Yes it works in ACR as well. It works in the camera profile section. Not the HSL sliders. This allows you get correct colors and still have full range of what the sliders offer.

Scatterbrained wrote in post #13515500
Welcome to the club! What took you so long?

As I used to custom color print I just adapted that work flow to digital.... but it is still basically by eye as there is no real translation between the two. I was in the store getting a new lens and saw them in the cabnet.... it worked on me for about two weeks in the back of my head. Then I gave up and decided to try it.

Mark1 wrote in post #13510827
I have been on the fence about getting one of these since they came out. I have been useing a color chart forever, as I used to print my own color work. But I could never pull the trigger on the passport. Till last week. OMG! It makes 90% of your post color work a 2 click process.

People seem to only want to talk about it as a white ballence tool. But that is "only the tip of the iceberg". Sure you shoot it and can have a choice of several white ballences to select from. At times "right" is not correct, and correct is not "right" so now you have a very easy way to obtain a ballence that works. Thats all well and good......

You must be "talking" to the wrong people because there are lots of people who've developed sophisticated workflows using all the features of the ColorChecker Passport. WB is only one of the features. See this video for examples: http://blog.snapfactor​y.com/?p=1193

Uhhhh...not if you take the time to create Dual-Illuminant profiles then set them as the default profiles in ACR or Lightroom.

Have not been talking to anybody. But a lot of the reviews on blogs, magazines...etc..etc.. always mention the white ballence aspect. But I would say just a bit less than half of them dont even mention the profile calibration aspect.

Even Dual-Ill's are not a one size fits all. They can be a patch, but I would never depend on one when it is so easy to shoot a frame at each set up. But I do mostly commercial where at times "almost" will not work like it can in other situations. I do not do weddings etc..etc.. so it is a lot easier for me.