Color chart and exposure card

[dwfieldjr]

I have a taking some private lessons in photography and my instructor showed me a color chart for getting the proper white balance on my camera, I have a canon t6. I have been looking around on eBay and amazon at the color charts as well as YouTube.

It seems that people are using the color charts to adjust their exposure(ISO,shutter speed, and aperture) my instructor was teaching me to use the black white and grey card for doing this and the color chart for my white balance but, I see the complete opposite when I look this up online.

Has anyone ever heard of doing it this way?


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[astroNikon]

I use a Black, white and gray card. But there are color charts too that you can find on eBay and amazon.

like this ==> 3in1 18% Digital Photography Black White Grey Exposure Color Balance Card Set S

or color ==> https://www.amazon.com/CameraTrax-2...83033&sr=8-4&keywords=color+chart+photography

 

[Christie Photo]

I can only tell you about my own experience. I have been using a gray card for exposure since the start... way back to the film days when I began in 1978. Since the advent of digital, I continue to use the same gray card for color balance too. So far, so good.

-Pete

 

[Ysarex]

I have a taking some private lessons in photography and my instructor showed me a color chart for getting the proper white balance on my camera, I have a canon t6. I have been looking around on eBay and amazon at the color charts as well as YouTube.

It seems that people are using the color charts to adjust their exposure(ISO,shutter speed, and aperture) my instructor was teaching me to use the black white and grey card for doing this and the color chart for my white balance but, I see the complete opposite when I look this up online.

Has anyone ever heard of doing it this way?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you're looking it up online and consulting Youtube then you will find both good and bad information. Ignore the bad stuff: for example it looks like you may have already found a source telling you ISO, shutter speed and aperture are used to adjust exposure. That's the bad stuff. Just shutter speed and aperture are used to adjust exposure.

You can use a grey card to both help set exposure and also to set white balance, but many grey cards are made primarily as exposure tools and often do a poor job setting white balance. There are good ones for white balance but then you need to be sure of what you've got.

To set white balance what you want is a target that is spectrally neutral -- it doesn't change the color of the light bouncing off it. Neutral grey can do that but so can neutral white and neutral white will generally work better. You can use the grey and white squares of a color checker, but they are not necessary for setting white balance. (They're also not necessary for setting exposure -- grey card is enough for that). To get and excellent (as good as anything you can purchase) white balance target pick up a piece of white Styrofoam. I just cut pieces from food takeout containers or smash coffee cups -- see image below on right.

The color checker cards can cost a few bucks and they're used for another purpose. You can as I said use them for WB and exposure but they're overkill for that. If you're not going to use them for their primary purpose it's kind of a waste to pay for them. All those color squares can be used to build a custom color input profile for your camera. This is only valuable if you're shooting and processing your own raw files and you want more precise control over the software rendering of color in your photo. Below in the image left side is a standard X-Rite Passport colorchecker that I was using to build a daylight camera profile. That's the primary purpose of the colorchecker cards. Some folks who have the colorchecker are likely to use it to also set WB and as an exposure target, but that's not required. It might be you're seeing that and finding it confusing -- a Styrofoam coffee cup is just as good for setting WB.

Joe

 

[dwfieldjr]

I use a Black, white and gray card. But there are color charts too that you can find on eBay and amazon.

like this ==> 3in1 18% Digital Photography Black White Grey Exposure Color Balance Card Set S

or color ==> https://www.amazon.com/CameraTrax-2...83033&sr=8-4&keywords=color+chart+photography

Do you use the black white and grey for white balance or exposure? Or both?


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