Highly recommended item for your bag!

I just got my Whibal white balance card today and tried it out. I used the whibal to get a test shot... then shot this image using auto white balance from the camera. The auto white balance didn't do a horrible job... but as you can see, the Whibal brought the real colors out. Auto tends to be a little on the warm side here. I didn't do noise reduction or sharpening to the auto balanced image so don't look at the softness and noise as related to the whibal shot... just to be fair. The only thing to judge here is the white balance.

First is the auto white balance... then the whibal balanced corrected image.

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Can you tell the difference between a Whibal white balance, a grey card white balance, and a white t-shirt white balance?

I bought a set of 8 x 10 grey cards the other day (3 for $10). I plan to use them to set exposure, but they could also be used for white balance. Will the Whibal do any better?

I have no idea what your takling about!! haha you know me but i can see a difference!!

Curtis N wrote:
Can you tell the difference between a Whibal white balance, a grey card white balance, and a white t-shirt white balance?

I bought a set of 8 x 10 grey cards the other day (3 for $10). I plan to use them to set exposure, but they could also be used for white balance. Will the Whibal do any better?

I ordered one of these:

http://www.photovision​video.com/target.html

From the videos, it looks like a really good tool for nailing exposure. So I figure I'll try it out.

Curtis N wrote:
Can you tell the difference between a Whibal white balance, a grey card white balance, and a white t-shirt white balance?

I bought a set of 8 x 10 grey cards the other day (3 for $10). I plan to use them to set exposure, but they could also be used for white balance. Will the Whibal do any better?

Well, ok sure... all of these things will do the job of getting good white balance... but tell me how convenient is it to carry around 8x10 gray cards for on location shoots? I have one too and it works well in the studio... but I really couldn't find anyway to put it in my bag without folding it and I didn't want to do that. And you know there may be that rare occasion where I want my model in something other than a white t-shirt.

This little card is the size of a photo ID and has a great black point and white point reference on it. I can hang it around my neck with the included lanyard. It has this little clip thing that I can just pull it off and get a reference shot with it...put it back on the lanyard, then move on.

From a convenience standpoint... I DO notice a difference.

I think that the WhiBal are great. The gray cards in my bag are always getting beat up. The WhiBal cards can get wet, dropped, and dirty. They're easy to clean up like new.

MagicallyDelicious wrote:
I have no idea what your takling about!! haha you know me but i can see a difference!!

haha... you're funny.

It's just a card to measure white balance. You use it to get quick reference shots on the go... or you can use it on a stand in the scene... then you take it out and do your shoot.

Go to www.whibal.com and you can see what it's all about. Here's a shot of the whibal in action so you can see what it looks like. I was using the lighting in the room, no flash with my 50 F/1.4

As you can see... it's a bit easier to manage than an 8x10 white balance reference or gray card.

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Just for the purpose of being complete... this is what I WAS using. Not very convenient to bring on site... and pull out for every location change. Don't get me wrong... it did work effectively. But I couldn't just hang this around my neck. I also laminated it because it was cardboard and easily ruined otherwise. One nice side effect of laminating it was that the reflection was a bit sharper and at a more narrow angle... so I could see it easier in the viewfinder which made it easier to tilt it so that the reflection was gone.

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Looks like a nifty tool.

Of course, I'm a tightwad, so I'm trying to figure out how to make something similar with a grey card, solid bleached chipboard and flat black spray paint. Stay tuned!

Incidently, grey cards don't need to be 8 x 10. I cut one in half, and the 5 x 8 fits in my hip pocket easily and is still plenty big to meter on.

I'm another WhiBal fan - I have a WhiBal G5 on a Rivet pin. I've one Rivet micro-clip on my lanyard, and another on the outside of my Toploader, so I can easily remove the WhiBal to shoot it.

The WhiBals are checked by a spectrophotometer and are guaranteed to be neutral, they're robust, and the product is well thought through (for example, though there's no longer a dark grey card, there's now a Photoshop plug-in to white balance JPEGs - though this is a destructive process unlike setting the correct white balance for a RAW file).

You can use a WhiBal to set a custom white balance so long as you can fill the partial circle in your viewfinder. Larger WhiBals are available, but not often needed with Canon cameras.


I think Michael Tapes really thought this one through, and it shows.

David

mmm carrie underwood :P how is her album?

OdiN1701 wrote:
I ordered one of these:

http://www.photovision​video.com/target.html

From the videos, it looks like a really good tool for nailing exposure. So I figure I'll try it out.

i just got done watching those videos from that website, but it appears to me that the Whibal will achieve the exact same results, provided all three areas are in the frame. Besides, the Whibal looks far easier to manage for photographers like me that are almost never shooting in a studio.

I LOVE her voice... the CD is excellent. If you like Martina McBride, and if you like the song "Jesus Take The Wheel"... you'll want the whole album.

Yeah... what he said. lol.

No, seriously... he's right. Using the photoshop plugin, you can properly white balance JPEG files. If you use layers, you CAN make it non-destructive... somewhat. :P

curious, what is the photoshop plugin you speak of?