Alan T. Price
New member
I just bought a whibal G6 card and there are a couple of things about it that disappoint me. I'd post this on the proper whibal forum but it keeps timing out because it is s-o-o-o s-l-o-o-o-w. It may as well not be there.
First disappointment: It makes a very poor grey card for exposure metering. Sure there is now a plug in for PS to let you do the metering after the shooting but it does not work in all software and it does not work with my camera meter at the time of shooting. I want to be able to take a light reading off the grey card and set my exposure manually from there.
I'll admit that the whibal card is for white balancing but having criticised the old fashioned grey cards for that purpose it seems a nuisance that I still need to have one with me as well as my whibal card just to get the exposure right.
Suggested solution #1: Make the rear of the whibal card 18% grey. It's not supposed to be used for white balancing anyway so why not make it useful ?
Suggested solution #2: Make the whibal support card 18% grey instead of black. This is the card that comes with the G6 whibal and is used to prop it up on a bench or whatever.
Second disappointment: As a white balance card the whibal tends to be rather poor if the image of it is taken at high ISO and/or contains lots of chrominance noise. Picking the grey card in the image with the software WB clour picker can result in choosing a small coloured spot that gives an incorrect white balance.
Suggested solution #1: If your software supports it, make the WB colour picker eye dropper use a larger numer of pixels to average its selection. Not all software supports this (including Canon DPP) and the colour noise spots are often much bigger than single-pixel (although I've never understood why that should be, but that's for another thread).
Suggested solution #2: Shoot the whibal card at low ISO to minimise the chrominance noise, and hope that changing the ISO does not alter the white balance.
I had not seen either of these two "problems" discussed anywhere before I bought the whibal card. I am glad that I have the whibal card but I just wish it was more versatile as an exposure reference card too.
I'd welcome any feedback.
- Alan
First disappointment: It makes a very poor grey card for exposure metering. Sure there is now a plug in for PS to let you do the metering after the shooting but it does not work in all software and it does not work with my camera meter at the time of shooting. I want to be able to take a light reading off the grey card and set my exposure manually from there.
I'll admit that the whibal card is for white balancing but having criticised the old fashioned grey cards for that purpose it seems a nuisance that I still need to have one with me as well as my whibal card just to get the exposure right.
Suggested solution #1: Make the rear of the whibal card 18% grey. It's not supposed to be used for white balancing anyway so why not make it useful ?
Suggested solution #2: Make the whibal support card 18% grey instead of black. This is the card that comes with the G6 whibal and is used to prop it up on a bench or whatever.
Second disappointment: As a white balance card the whibal tends to be rather poor if the image of it is taken at high ISO and/or contains lots of chrominance noise. Picking the grey card in the image with the software WB clour picker can result in choosing a small coloured spot that gives an incorrect white balance.
Suggested solution #1: If your software supports it, make the WB colour picker eye dropper use a larger numer of pixels to average its selection. Not all software supports this (including Canon DPP) and the colour noise spots are often much bigger than single-pixel (although I've never understood why that should be, but that's for another thread).
Suggested solution #2: Shoot the whibal card at low ISO to minimise the chrominance noise, and hope that changing the ISO does not alter the white balance.
I had not seen either of these two "problems" discussed anywhere before I bought the whibal card. I am glad that I have the whibal card but I just wish it was more versatile as an exposure reference card too.
I'd welcome any feedback.
- Alan