Is grey card necessary if you shoot in RAW?

I currently do not use a grey card and generally just shoot using AWB. I am planning to shoot an event later where the loft space is pretty much white. Although I intend to keep my frames tight I would prefer if the background didn't come out grey. If I don't use a grey card and shoot in RAW can I just correct the WB in Lightroom? Is a grey card still necessary?

The 2nd reason is because I plan to shoot a lot of snowboarding photos on the slopes this year as well.

Thanks!

While you can adjust the WB in post, it will just be a guessing game unless you have a calibrated target (Whibal, etc.). Rather than chase proper WB after the fact, it's better to shoot one frame containing your WB target, then use the WB eyedropper in Lightroom to adjust. Simply, fast, and accurate.

A Gray card...no, not really.....something you know the known value of.... yes!

If you are working to the point you need perfect color ballance. You do need something of a known value in one of the shots of each setup. Gray cards are just one option. With out something to reference you can't get it exactly right. Gray cards are neutral and a known value. So just use it to instantly ballance the shot. If you do not have something to use as a reference, it is a judgement call. That simple. No other choices .....referenced or guess.

That said it really depends on the subject. Portraits are more done by the feeling the colors give. Priduct shots usually have to be exact as the colors really do matter. As in , like Cocca Cola has a pattent on the red they use.

I look at it this way - you've got $10K worth of photo equipment, you really should spend $50 on a white balance target to get proper color with it.

It depends on what you mean by "grey card" The traditional grey card used by film photographers is not suited for digital photography because most are not spectrally neutral. Also, their purpose is for determining exposure and not white balance.

You would need a card specifically designed for White Balance like a WhiBal, an Expodisc, or one of the other digital targets.

BTW, just last night I shot my son's high school jazz band concert that was held in a poorly lit auditorium with harsh tungsten lighting. I shot WhiBal reference images with my cameras, then used my Expodisc to set Custom White Balance in my cameras. It turned out that the Expodisc nailed the White Balance so I didn't need to do any adjustments in Lightroom. When I looked at the temperatures; the Whibal gave a temp of 2750 and tint of +17; the Expodisc gave a temperature of 2700 and tint of +25.

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big_apple_ken wrote in post #6673017
I currently do not use a grey card and generally just shoot using AWB. I am planning to shoot an event later where the loft space is pretty much white. Although I intend to keep my frames tight I would prefer if the background didn't come out grey. If I don't use a grey card and shoot in RAW can I just correct the WB in Lightroom? Is a grey card still necessary?

The 2nd reason is because I plan to shoot a lot of snowboarding photos on the slopes this year as well.

Thanks!

You are confusing two very different things, WB and exposure or in other words, color and luminousity. Whether the walls are grey or white will depend on exposure in the camera and levels (white point) adjustment in post. Getting the right WB will prevent the walls having a color cast but will not affect tonality.

For WB its a great source for Custom WB under difficult light conditions or just use in one of your shots and apply balance using dropper in PP or for exposure you can use it by filling the frame in the same light as your subject with the grey card and gain correct exposure........Howeve​r as you are shooting in RAW you could just make your adjustments after in PP but IMHO it would be prudent to get more right in camera...

I tend to use a photographic gray card or Whitebal and a mini Macbeth CC card. But I do that because it slows me down and makes me work more deliberately.

Absolutely correct color is cirtical for commerical advertising, where companies pay thousands for logos, etc. It is also important in some scientific settings, like archeology.

For the rest of us, absolutely correct color is kind of silly. I don't care if my photo of a hydrangea is scientifically accurate. I care if the color is pleasing to the eye.

There are times where recording visual information with high fidelity is critical. For those of us who do portraits, landscapes, nature, etc. -- who cares if in reality the light was slightly warmer, cooler, etc. We're painting with light!

Cheers,

Mitch

gmitchel850 wrote in post #6675234
I tend to use a photographic gray card or Whitebal and a mini Macbeth CC card. But I do that because it slows me down and makes me work more deliberately.

Absolutely correct color is cirtical for commerical advertising, where companies pay thousands for logos, etc. It is also important in some scientific settings, like archeology.

For the rest of us, absolutely correct color is kind of silly. I don't care if my photo of a hydrangea is scientifically accurate. I care if the color is pleasing to the eye.

There are times where recording visual information with high fidelity is critical. For those of us who do portraits, landscapes, nature, etc. -- who cares if in reality the light was slightly warmer, cooler, etc. We're painting with light!

Cheers,

Mitch

I agree with you Mitch. There are times when colour accuracy is critical.

But I suspect too many of us are looking for perfection (whatever that is), and forgetting about creativity. With florals, I generally trust my judgement on a calibrated monitor- whenever I've taken a WhiBal shot, and adjust to that setting, the greens are not attractive, and I adjust to what I like.

If you take a picture of people around a campfire, and change the colour balance to get the colour of the clothing and faces "right", you will lose the ambience and mood of the campfire. Whenever I've looked at scenes around the campfire, I see the colours as warmer than they actually are.

However, I don't suggest shooting under fluorescent lighting without some correction - who wants to be green?

OTOH, if 30 percent of males have some colour vision deficiencies, then they had best use the target.

I think it's important to start from a known neutral point. I use a Whibal. I may then move warmer or colder from that point (as in your campfire example), but starting from a calibrated target is step 1. Especially if you're shooting an event, as is the OP. "Events" can have some notorious mixed lighting that becomes a nightmare to correct.

It only takes a few seconds to hold out a Whibal and snap a frame. Very cheap insurance, I think.

The problem, Pam, is that in mixed light, a gray card is not a lot of help. It is like standing in the shade and using a gray card while shooting out under the trees for a landscape. Unless your graycard is where the light is, it's not a lot of help. Mixed lighting is difficult, gray card or not.

I definitely agree that you do not want typically want strong color casts. (Sometimes we do.) But that can typically be corrected with the white balance sliders by eye.

I don't deny that there are times when color is critical. For a scientific book on hydrangeas, I'd want accurate color. For my framed prints of hydrangea, I want pleasing color. That typically means extra contrast, extra saturation, etc. Was it what my eye saw? Probably not. Was it what my min'd eye saw while I was composing the shot. Yes.

If you shoot a JPEG, you should use a gray card or other reference to get the white balance right. Adjusting it in PP is not a cost-free edit. When you shoot RAW, however, you can whack the white balance around cost-free.

Cheers,

Mitch

I never use a card..don't need it in Raw..but just in case I need it for some odd reason if there is mixed lighting I always put something white strategically in the picture..for instance when shooting a wedding I always put a white dove where I know it will show in the pics and use that as a white reference. When shooting environmental portraitsI always put something white like a white piece of paper somewhere where it will show up because I can always use the clone tool in photoshop to get rid of it. I never shoot AWB..If shooting in tungsten I always gel my flash and set WB to Tungsten..or set the WB to flash..AWB will have it all over the place and more difficult to get right even when shooting raw.

Grey Card who uses one and which one ??

Waiting to adjust WB after shooting RAW may be a mistake. Curtis N found that a blown red channel is a problem:
How NOT to expose to the right

A blown red channel is not a WB problem. It's an exposure problem that leads to data loss.

WB is not applied in camera to the image. It is just a metadata tag. WB is applied by the RAW converter. That's why you can change the WB in LR or ACR and it does not further degrade the photo like converting the WB of a JPEG or a photo once it is in a photo editor like Photoshop.

What might appear to be a blown red channel in SRGB or AdobeRGB might not be a blown red channel at all. It might be a clumped red channel. That means the data comes close to 255 but not 255. There is still valid information.

Canon DSLRs are prone to this. The D60 was notorious for what appeared to be blown red channels and turned out to be clumped up in a wider colorspace, such as ProPhotoRGB. I had lots of yellow flowers in bright daylight that came out orange.

If you convert from RAW to ProPhotoRGB and the red channel is blown, you can be sure it is blown. But don't conclude that from what you see in sRGB or AdobeRGB. I had lots of photos with the Canon D60 and some with the 10D that I thought were burned out in the Red channel. Nope. Not one, if I converted to ProPhotoRGB. Those flowers were yellow in ProPhotoRGB.

Is it possible that yanking the color temperature to the red or yellow could cause some pixels that are precipitously close to 255 to 255? Yes. That's still a burned out channel problem. Using a gray card with a custom white balance does not ensure that no WB adjustment will be necessary. People tend to shoot the card and use it after lighting conditions change, they get uneven illumination on the card, mixed lighting happens, etc. You want to avoid burning out a channel, whether you use a gray card or not.

The only advantage that I can see to making an in-camera CWB as opposed to shooting a neutral target and setting WB in the converter, is that if color accuracy is really important (for the CSI techies among us), when the camera calculates a CWB it averages out all the data within the metering circle. Converter probes, OTOH, read a much smaller area (typically a 9 or 16 pixel area) and are therefore more influenced by noise and the foibles of Bayer demosaicing. Probe an image of a grey card in half a dozen different places and you will get half a dozen slightly different results.