18% Gray Card for White Balance
- Thread starter arkstorm
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Mike
Contributor
Quick and easy, but not totally accurate grey card is to use the palm of your hand, you'll be surprised at the results.
The ideal card to set WB is an 18% Grey card ... loads of people use back of hand, inside of a Pringles lid etc. .... all are approximations.
To answer your Q ... 2 companies I am aware of sell 100% waterproof colour ref cards
DGK-2
available for 60% cheaper via Amazon
or WhiBal - LensAlign
NYCSurfer
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18% grey card is for used to establish neutral color after exposure, not for white balance. It is used assuming a normal exposure and if you color correct the grey card shot to match the actual grey card, all shots after that which are shot under the same lighting/exposure will be color correct.
NYCSurfer
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No apologies needed. You may be right and I may be wrong. It HAS happened before. If you don't believe me, ask my wife.
To the OP, if you use a grey card to white balance it will cause you to overexpose because the camera will see the grey as white and attempt to compensate for the "dark" images.
No apologies needed. You may be right and I may be wrong. It HAS happened before. If you don't believe me, ask my wife.
To the OP, if you use a grey card to white balance it will cause you to overexpose because the camera will see the grey as white and attempt to compensate for the "dark" images.
I have had good success using a grey card for white balance. Both topside and underwater.
Grey card as well as white cards can be used for white balance. The camera auto white balance in fact uses what it considers white or grey within the frame being shot.
Any object close to that 18% will work well underwater under the condition that the surface is not reflecting which is the issue with most of the cards including the PADI white balance slate
I have used all sorts of cards my hand and the sandy bottom with best results using the sandy bottom but now I only use a filter and leave the camera in Auto it works wonders and I don't have to waste time. This is however working well only with the RX100 with other cameras it was suboptimal especially for cameras that don't have fast lenses or have grainy and noise picture at relatively low ISO
Any object close to that 18% will work well underwater under the condition that the surface is not reflecting which is the issue with most of the cards including the PADI white balance slate
I have used all sorts of cards my hand and the sandy bottom with best results using the sandy bottom but now I only use a filter and leave the camera in Auto it works wonders and I don't have to waste time. This is however working well only with the RX100 with other cameras it was suboptimal especially for cameras that don't have fast lenses or have grainy and noise picture at relatively low ISO
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