It takes practice, but this method yields accurate and repeatable results. If you're shooting a tungsten-balanced film in tungsten studio lighting, shooting the gray card is very straightforward. When shooting in daylight - which changes color throughout the day - shooting the gray card depends upon the light you want to define as the white light source.
If you'd like the sun to appear warmer, illuminate the gray card with the sky plus clouds, blocking the sunlight. If you'd like the sun to appear as the neutral source, shoot the gray card in the sunlight. A daylight-balanced film is very easy to color grade in a scene shot in a mixture of sun and skylight. If it's overcast, you won't have much of a choice unless you're introducing your own lighting.
At sunrise or sunset, use the sky opposite the sun to illuminate the gray card. First I almost never do custom white balance in camera.
Having said that — if you want to give it a go here are the steps. They are slightly different of Canon and Nikon if you use something else like Fuji, Pentax, Olympus, etc. There is probably a video showing how to do it with your camera step by step. Read more about how metering works in your camera here: Why is the snow gray in my winter photos?
It is ideal to use this technique for portraits using natural light when the lighting remains constant, and circumstances where you have the time to setup your shot, use a tripod, and do a custom white balance as outlined above. It is not the time to use a gray card for metering when you have a moving subject or the light is changing rapidly.
Notice in the photo above the model is holding the gray card in front of her. Get your subject to help you by doing this, or prop it up in your shot somehow. Make sure the gray card is facing the camera straight on, as sometimes the slightest tilt or turn to one side can change how much light is bouncing off of it, and that will affect your exposure reading.
Notice how large my gray card is in the photo above. The Promaster brand has that, others might too. They offer a completely neutral surface for white balance calculations.
Unlike most colors in a scene — blues, yellows, greens, etc. So by training your camera on a gray card, you can set a perfect white balance for everything you photograph. Although the basic white balance settings in cameras can be pretty good, they do tend to struggle at times. For example, tungsten bulbs can vary greatly in color temperature , depending on their quality and power output.
This may lead to the tungsten setting on your camera failing to give you an accurate representation of colors, hence the need for a neutral gray card. Imagine a street photographer, who goes back and forth from shadow to sunlight while photographing subjects on the move. A gray card would be useless, as the exposure and white balance would need recalibrating from moment to moment. Additionally, a gray card only works if your subject and the gray card are illuminated by the same light.
Yet in certain genres of photography — bird photography and sports photography, for instance — the subject may be far off in the distance. On the other hand, gray cards are perfect for controlled shooting scenarios. You can get close to your subject, take a gray card reading, and rely on it for an entire shooting session.
Plus, gray cards are often necessary in these scenarios, as you must accurately represent the product and food colors. So how does it work? First, set your camera to spot metering mode , which tells your camera to meter off a small spot in the center of the frame.
While this is not absolutely necessary, it will help a lot, especially in circumstances where you cannot fill the entire frame with the gray card. Next, put the gray card in your scene, right at the center of the frame.
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