18% Grey Card or Preset White Balance on Camera for Flash Photography?

[GaryMarsh]

I would really appreciate it if somebody could put me in the picture regarding balancing the light using indoor flash directed at the subject and not bounced of a wall or coloured ceiling. I have a Lastolite 18% grey card which completely fills my frame on my Nikon D800 which is great for indoor shots using ambient light but if I am using my Nikon Speedlight do I still need to use the grey card or am I just as well setting my cameras internal white balance setting to flash and leaving it to the camera to correct the proper colour balance.

I would really appreciate any help on this matter as I am a bit confused which is the best option.

Kind regards
Gary

[Manfred M]

If you are shooting jpeg, use your current technique to set a custom white balance. It should be placed so that the light falling on your subject also falls on the gray card (i.e. your Lastolite target). Any time you change the lighting you could reset, especially if the room you are shooting in does not have neutral walls. The colour temperature of your Speedlights will vary too and they tend to get more yellow with use / age, so a custom white balance is the right way to go.

If you are shooting raw, then do the same thing with your gray target, but then when you import raw, do your white balance there and copy those same settings for all the other images shot under the same lighting conditions; i.e. the colour temperature and tint settings. I will sue the raw processor to synchronize the settings across all of the images I am planning to import. The same arguments I made for jpegs also applies when you are shooting raw.

[rpcrowe]

I don't shoot JPEG (ever) but when I shoot RAW, I set my white balance the way that Manfred described above.

A long while ago, Donald, put me on to the WhiBal Card, as a target. The WhiBal seems a bit expensive but which I have been using successfully for several years now. I use the studio size card and hang it around my neck. I seldom worry about white balance when shooting outdoors, the Canon auto-white-balance usually is normally accurate enough for my uses in most outdoor situations. I do use the WhiBal card for dog portraits - especially for portraits of non-white dogs. For white dogs, I will often use the white coat of the dog as my target (since that is the portion of the image that I want accurately white).

http://michaeltapesdesign.com/whibal.html

I am not sure if the hype that the WhiBal card is more accurate than other targets is correct but it works for me and"If it ain't broke, don't fix it"

[DanK]

I too carry a small (pocket-sized) whiBal and use it as Manfred describes (although I shoot only raw). I find that I can always ask someone to hold it while I take a test shot. They find it amusing.

[xpatUSA]

As far as I can tell, mixed lighting hasn't been mentioned specifically yet. The use of a gray/white card plus Custom WB should account for mixed lighting generally speaking, whereas the in-camera preset flash WB would certainly not.

[DanK]

As far as I can tell, mixed lighting hasn't been mentioned specifically yet. The use of a gray/white card plus Custom WB should account for mixed lighting generally speaking, whereas the in-camera preset flash WB would certainly not.

Indeed. If the mix is complex enough, adjustment can be very difficult, but I find that in the typical situations I encounter--flash + tungsten, or flash + LED, adustment of the white balance from a whiBal shot does fine. However, there is a lot of variation among LEDs, so the latter can get complex. For example, we recently bought a bunch of 3000K LED reflector bulbs from a well-regarded company for use in a room with some halogens (truly 3000K). The LED bulbs had a strong magenta spike (easy to document by shooting at a fixed temperature of 3000). Opposite magenta is yellow-green. So the presence of these strong LEDs made everything else seem a sickly yellow-green. I returned the bulbs.