I was grabbing as many treasures as I could in my second attempt at a $1 bin. In the first stab at the cat I had acquired some lenses and flash units, but this time I was concentrating on weirder stuff.
This is a WhiBal White Balance Reference Card—although it is actually four cards as you see. The 3½ by 2 inch cards (from top card with sticker on it) are—
Light grey
18 per cent standard grey card
(this is the one all lightmeters are supposed to be based on)
White
Black
The stack of cards comes on a neck strap with a removable connector. I have tried to understand how it is to be used, but every link to further information is a dead-end. From what I can gather when shooting RAW files you simply take an image of the cards in the lighting you are going to shoot under. Then, later when you are processing the images on your computer, you can load the reading from the lightest grey card and use that reading to set the colour for all the following images.
If you are correcting JPEG images, you use the darker grey card to set your correction.
I shot the first two images under indirect daylight in my kitchen using the cloudy setting for the colour temperature of the light source.
Then, just as an experiment, I shot two images of the cards at two camera settings.
The first setting is the camera set to “Auto” colour temperature. I assume the small digital camera “reads” the image and takes its best guess at making neutral tones. This image (unlike the first two blog illustrations) is straight from the camera without any adjustment.
Then I reset the camera to the “cloudy” colour temperature setting. Without any adjustment (other than downsizing) the results are definitely overly warm.
If I had a camera that shot RAW images, and processing software to convert the RAW images to something I could share, I would think the WhiBal cards are a dandy idea!
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