White balance

[table1349]

White polystyrene foam ("Styrofoam") cups and plates work very well for white balancing. You can either use them like a white card or like an expodisk (but for white balance, not necessarily for exposure).

Polystyrene foam is spectrally neutral by nature - more neutral than many commercial white balance targets. Plain white paper kitchen towels tend to be good targets as well - they usually don't have optical brighteners. As an aside, that makes paper towels useful as neutral diffuse reflectors.

Best,
Helen

PS Here's a link to a little note I wrote about white balance targets.

Cool thats good to know.

 

[Boz Mon]

With the Nikons it is easy to set WB. Go to White Balance in the menu and then to measure. Fill you viewfinder with the target, then you measure it. Like Helen said the styrofoam plates are great or, you can get targets at B&H or, an Expodisc which is what I use a majority of the time.

Thats what I was doing and for some reason it wasnt working all the time. I know how to do it, and I know why to do it, but for some reason it was giving me errors at the time. I tried it again tonight and it worked. As far as gray/white cards go, I am not a pro, nor am I that serious into photography to think about getting one, paper works fine for now.

 

[kami]

I've been editing my white balance mistakes using the my D80's histogram or if I shoot in RAW I do it in photoshop.

But I've been contremplating on getting a whibal card as shown on the link below.

http://www.whibalhost.com/_Tutorials/WhiBal/01/index.html

Does anyone have any experience with this?

 

[Senor Hound]

Thats what I was doing and for some reason it wasnt working all the time. I know how to do it, and I know why to do it, but for some reason it was giving me errors at the time. I tried it again tonight and it worked. As far as gray/white cards go, I am not a pro, nor am I that serious into photography to think about getting one, paper works fine for now.

I also recommend reading things on the internet about color temperature. If you want an understanding of why you have to change the white balance, or want to be able to adjust it manually, it will really help.

With a good enough understanding of color temperature, you'll not only be able to get a perfect white balance every time, but also be able to "tweak" the white balance sometimes to achieve a desired effect. Like, for example shooting on the fluorescent setting while in a room with standard incandescent bulbs will make everything look bluish and cold. If anything its fun to mess around with.