Comments on: The WhiBal Is a Sweet White Balance Card

By: Thanksgiving 2007 Photos — Hand Coding

Thanksgiving 2007 Photos — Hand Coding — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:47:50 +0000

[...] addition to my usual camera gear, I also took along my WhiBal white balance card and it worked a treat. In particular with the turkey preparation scenes within the kitchen, the [...]

By: Toby

Toby — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 11:24:01 +0000

The difference in the sample-picture is astonishing…absolutely preferable! A little bit more white seems better than too less.

Thanks!

By: Wire

Wire — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 06:04:45 +0000

Yes, Quite frequently the light should not be entirely neutral. For this reason I sometimes set my white balancing to slightly off-neutral to bring back some natural wavelength shift.

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 23 May 2007 19:03:23 +0000

You make a good point there, Matthew — an accurate white balance isn’t always the most artistic option. All the same, I often find it handy to have a known starting-point on those occasions where I might be futzing with white balance.

By: Matthew Dingemans

Matthew Dingemans — Wed, 23 May 2007 18:18:40 +0000

Hi… I found your page when I was searching for “Dallas camera club.”

Regarding the white balance: the one problem you may find with such cold-hard (or is that card-hold?) white balancing methods is that you aren’t actually supposed to *always* see neutral lighting. Quite frequently the light should not be entirely neutral. For this reason I sometimes set my white balancing to slightly off-neutral to bring back some natural wavelength shift.

I often do not even gel my strobes and am quite happy with the white balance I get, finding it just as good as manually card balancing it…

Cheers,
Matthew

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 17 May 2007 21:31:42 +0000

@Jason: The ExpoDisc looks tempting — it’s rather handy that it doesn’t require any extra steps after a photo’s been taken. On the other side of the coin, though, I also like some of the flexibility that the WhiBal offers in that it can be used either before or after a shot’s been taken.

@Michelle: Hi there! Indeed, I am the fellow that sat behind you at the last Dallas Camera Club meeting :). Thanks also for your kind words — I’m glad you’ve enjoyed my shots.

By: Nat

Nat — Thu, 17 May 2007 04:10:02 +0000

Thanks much for the post, Alex. I read up on the expodisc (thanks Jason) also, but decided that Whibal might be the way to go for me. Alex, have you used the jpeg plugin, tho’?

By: Michelle

Michelle — Thu, 17 May 2007 03:37:45 +0000

Hi Alex! Your blog is great. Before I went to Dallas Camera Club meeting, I searched for “Dallas Camera Club” and found your page. The information you wrote here was really helpful! In fact, I did go to the meeting and I’m pretty sure it was you I was sitting in front of! Anyway, congrats on your new camera and all your great pictures! :)

By: Jason Coyne

Jason Coyne — Thu, 03 May 2007 18:26:13 +0000

I use a lens filter from expoImaging (http://expodisc.com/) called the expodisc for this and it works great. It is an opaque filter you place on your lens (or hold in front of it you are using a different lens), and put the camera into the wB calibration mode. You have to re-calibrate each time you change lighting, but you have to take your reference shot every time you change lighting too. But then in post processing, you don’t have to fix each picture, they come out right automagically.

They have a bonus warming and cooling version too that still give very natural looking pics, but slightly warmer or cooler for skin tones.

Check it out.

By: Alex

Alex — Thu, 03 May 2007 17:31:38 +0000

Yup, the mouseover image is the “After” photo. I’m sorry if the faces came off as a bit dead, but I’m guessing the direct lighting within the screening room might be contributing to that. Or maybe we’re just a bunch of tanless geeks who haven’t seen much sun lately ;). Either way, here’s the full-size version of the shot in case that helps.