Keychain WhiBal G7 by Michael Tapes Design

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: Nothing that includes a biner clip can be all bad.

The Long Version: Michael Tapes has been making interesting photographic accessories out of plastic for some time now, and if I'm not mistaken the WhiBal white balance reference is on its seventh generation. That's an awful lot of iterations for such a simple little thing.

I have a certain fetish for white balance references. I love my Colorchecker Passport, and have the full-size chart as well; the Lastolite Ezybalance is my longest-serving photographic accessory, outlasting every camera I've owned except for my Olympus E-1. But I felt the need to add something much more portable to my collection, so I picked up the keychain size of WhiBal in my most recent order from a large New York photography store whose name invariably translates into some awkward HTML.

Choosing a white balance reference is about trust. The WhiBal has been around forever, and has developed a reputation (and web presence) that gives it a certain authority. There are many cheaper plastic cards out there, but without being able to compare them to a known colour reference, how can I trust them? Generic might be fine for medications, but for colour accuracy I'm sticking with the name brands.

The Keychain WhiBal is really small. Measuring just 56mm by 26mm, it includes a petite Nite-Ize "S"- biner clip and has scale markings to create the world's most awkward ruler. While I suppose I could put it on my keychain, it usually lives on the Crumpler Grub sleeve that I store my Canon S100 in. That way I always have it with me when I'm taking photos, and most importantly, makes it much harder to lose the tiny little thing.

I suppose it's a little ridiculous to knowingly spend $18.95US on less than fifteen square centimetres of plastic and then be disappointed by the result, but I have to say that I really wish that the WhiBal was double-sided. Instead it has one side that's devoted to colour accuracy, and the reverse is entirely consumed by marketing and branding. That seems excessive. Now I need to watch which way the teeny card is facing when I include it in a scene, diverting my limited attention to manage what should be a trivial task.

And no, the reverse side with all of the advertising doesn't give accurate white balance results. True, none of my other white references are double sided, but they're also not petite and symmetrical. I've had to add a bit of tape to the reverse side of the WhiBal so that I can feel the difference and know which side needs to face the camera. The strength of their smallest card is that it's very easy to carry and stick into the scene as needed, but prior to this little modification I had needed to take my eye away from the camera, or literally refocus, to be able to use it.

The Keychain size WhiBal can only be used by taking a photo that includes it and then sampling it as a colour reference in post-production. It's far too small to set a custom white balance in-camera, as it won't fill the required area of the frame while still being in the same light as the rest of the scene. But with a raw workflow it's simpler and faster to fix the images in post than it is to change the invariably convoluted camera settings; those who need straight-from-camera jpegs will need to look elsewhere for a much larger white reference.

One thing to watch for is the camera's exposure. I like to keep my photos bright and pull the darks back down in post, and the light grey of the WhiBal is easy to clip against a dark subject. Bigger cards that occupy more of the frame aren't as susceptible to this, but the small card just doesn't have much of an impact on the camera's meter.

As useful as it is – and it really is quite useful – the keychain WhiBal isn't perfect. I accept that it's a trustworthy and calibrated neutral, or rather that half of it is, but it's inelegant. Although perhaps I limit my thinking too much by simply wishing that it was double-sided, even though that would be a huge improvement.

Michael Tapes has proven himself to be an innovator. So how about giving us something better than a basic card? There's already a white balance cube on the market, but it's a complicated device and could be simplified. Memory card cases, cleaning cloths, lens caps: there are plenty of other items that photographers carry that could incorporate a calibrated grey into their design. I'd buy a nice pen that I could use as a white balance reference in a heartbeat. We're now into the second decade of mainstream digital photography – this stuff should be easier by now.

last updated 1 mar 2012

X-rite ColorMunki Display

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 3 out of 5
Yeah, but: It's better than the Huey…

The Long Version: It's been three years since I reviewed the Pantone Huey, and boy does that ever make me feel old. The Huey was a seriously first-generation device, while the X-rite Colormunki Display – a bad combination of words if I ever heard one – is so much more capable that there's absolutely no comparison. I'd say that I was embarrassed to have stuck with the Huey for so long, but the truth is that I stopped using it ages ago.

The Display – I can't go through that name again – is a compact unit that lacks the cord-wrapping base of the Huey, but comes across as a much more substantial unit. In place of suction cups it uses a counter-weight to hold it in place against the monitor, and with a bit of fiddling it did a pretty good job even with a monitor that can't tilt backwards. Running the "easy" profile took only about six minutes, and the software was quite happy on both on OSX 10.6 and 10.7.

One of the abilities of the Display is that it can match a second monitor to the main screen. The Huey could never get my Samsung add-on to look like my iMac, or even remotely colour-accurate, but with the Display it was easy. And when the time comes for something a little more complex, there's also an Advanced mode that allows more sophisticated controls. This has even managed to do the impossible, and I've reduced my iMac's monitor from its retina-scorching default minimum intensity to merely being very bright.

Although I can't compare the Display to other contemporary monitor calibrators, I can give it a solid endorsement over older and inferior devices. When I say it like that I suppose that's not exactly a breakthrough endorsement, but I really hadn't expected to be this impressed with the Display. Simple to use, effective, and able to coordinate multiple monitors – what's not to like?

last updated 4 dec 2011

Delta 1 18% Gray Card

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: It's pretty much neutral.

The Long Version: This cardboard grey card is marketed by Delta 1, a company out of Dallas, Texas. Their website is a little short on details; apparently the page for the grey card didn't make the transition over from Geocities. But the packaging comes to the rescue, saying that it has a reflectance of 18% (+/-1%) 'on which all external and internal light meters are calibrated.' There's more here by Thom, which is interesting reading if you're planning on using these for their stated purpose: getting accurate exposures.

The other way to use them is as a grey reference for white balance. The manufacturer doesn't endorse this, but my simple comparison tests show mine as being colour neutral - or at least close enough that it doesn't make a difference. It may not be as reliable as my new Passport, or even my Ezybalance, but my motto for colour management is "close enough is good enough" - it's just that "close enough" depends on the situation. This cheap cardboard will get you pretty close.

B+H sells a single one of these for about $5, and Adorama sells a pair for $12, unless you get them via Amazon for $15. While that's a bit spendy for grey cardboard, don't think about it as buying two cards, think about it as 160 square inches of eyedropperable surface. Buy one set, cut them down into little pieces, and get a lot more milage out of them. The smallest useful size will depend on what you shoot, but conversely it's about the only way to get one small enough for macro photography. My favourite size is 2"x3.5", so that they fit into my business card case. Since I have one in my camera bag(s) anyway, I'm never more than arm's reach away from a reasonably right white balance.

x-rite Colorchecker Passport

Concept: 5 out of 5
Execution: 4 out of 5
Yeah, but: It's not quite foolproof, but it's a big improvement over the stock setup.

The Long Version: Alright, so I'm a joiner - I'm okay with that. Last night when I saw Michael Reichmann's review of the Colorchecker Passport by xrite, nee Macbeth, my eyes went wide and I was bolt upright on the couch. I've had the full-size color checker chart for a while, and had nearly bought the credit-card version a half-dozen times. Its price stopped me - it's a lot of money to pay for something that will take a lot of wear and tear as I'd be subjecting it to use away from the protected confines of studio shooting. Sure, the Passport is actually more expensive, but it's a plastic clamshell design that's strong and self-standing. If the stores hadn't been closed, I would have had one last night.

Instead, I was out of the house before 10am on a Saturday - something that happens only once every couple of months and usually involves a cookie from Starbucks as a bribe. I was actually worried that the local Canadian Tire of camera stores would sell out. (Okay, so it's a very slim chance, but it is possible that there are that many Toronto photographers as skewed as I am.) Happily there was still a half-dozen in stock, and I was on my way back home after a quick detour to the Apple store to pick up a new iPod. It's easy to guess which one I unpacked first - yes, I am that much of a camera geek. I'm also easily distracted and absentminded, so I've added a couple of strips of silver/black reflective tape to help the all-black Passport stand out among the various black cards that I invariably have scattered around when I'm shooting jewellery.

Most photographer's reviews don't mention that the reverse side of the colour chart is a light grey white balance target. It is somewhat redundant, and feels a little like there was some blank space to fill. Perhaps it could be useful when the subject is too far away to use the smaller squares in the two colour targets, but I'm reaching to try to understand this one. It's also interesting that it's a much lighter tone than my various grey cards, so perhaps it's been corrected for the 1/2 stop underexposure that an 18% grey card will cause, but x-rite only calls it a white balance target. Regardless of that mystery, the Passport is a more practical tool than the older Gretag Macbeth card that's also in these photos. The larger charts' size and cardboard 'protective' sleeve makes it excellent for the main studio and not much else.

Taking a brief detour, I've put this photo in black and white to emphasize my favourite Lightroom white balance trick. Using the eyedropper tool is never precise, and I know that my monitor isn't calibrated well enough to judge the hue by eye. Lightroom has a handy "grayscale" button. I hit it, and if the visible colour doesn't change, then I know I'm good regardless of my monitor's accuracy. Easy-peasy.

The Colorchecker Passport is perfectly named - except for the missing U - as it is indeed almost exactly the size of my Canadian passport. Its thickness is half-way between a passport and a Moleskine notebook, which is another classic back-pocked item. It's large enough to be a useful size, but small enough to carry and hold. The design is a clamshell that covers a middle panel with the standard and WB targets on opposite sides, and the way the clasp is done it's simple to just open it to the half that I want to use. With all three panels open it's self-standing, and there are detents in the plastic hinges that let it stand at different angles. Someone put a lot of thought into how this color checker would be used, which is the exact opposite of the traditional and mini charts. I'm very impressed.

But wait, there's more! The Passport also includes a CD with software for building custom Camera Raw profiles. Sure, no big deal - Adobe Labs had a DNG profile generator out in 2008 that does the same thing. At least that's what I thought before I tried it out. I launched the xrite software, fed it the DNG of the (uncorrected) image above, and it automatically recognized the chart and did its thing. All I needed to do was name the profile it was going to create, and it even put it in the right spot for Lightroom to find it the next time it launched. (I'm using the format "yy-mm-dd Lightsource".) But I didn't even need to work that hard; it also includes a Lightroom plugin that creates a new profile without ever needing to see the stand-alone application. For comparison, I tried to use the Adobe Labs software, and gave up on the second step because I couldn't remember how to get it to work. Once again, xrite has just nailed the practical aspects of actually using their product.

After one day, I can't imagine doing any colour-critical photography without using this target. It's more powerful than a grey card and not much more difficult to use. The only problem I can foresee is that I'll be littering my Calibration panel with various presets, but smart naming will help with that. My xrite Colorchecker Passport is about to become indispensable.

Three-Week Update: Now that I've integrated the Passport into my photography, the results have been as good as I hoped. I've been using it for some of my casual photography, where it gives me a white balance reference even if I don't go all the way with a custom profile based on that particular moment of light. For product photography, I'll import all of the images, find the image of the Color Checker that I want to use, create a profile based on it, and then quit and relaunch Lightroom. Once LR reopens, I'll set that image (still open in the develop window) to the new profile and correct the white balance, go back to the library in grid view, select all images, and sync the calibration and WB. Then I'll tell Lightroom to build my 1:1 previews, and go make a sandwich. The sandwich actually takes longer than creating and using the profile.

Before I shifted most of my 'serious' photography to my Nikon, I had all four of my Olympus SLRs profiled using the Adobe Labs software and the full-sized colour chart. This lets me use any body with very similar colour results. There's no reason why I can't also do that with the D700, but now that I have the Passport, it's just as easy to create a profile for each specific lighting setup for even more accurate results. There's still significant value in doing a dual-illuminant profile - not least of which is that it can be included in a Lightroom preset - but ironically that will be more useful for my general photography than the really colour-critical work.

Compared to my stock profile that I'd created through the Adobe Labs software, the xrite profile (left) is significantly more saturated, and I'll also say that it's the more accurate of the two. That's not a huge surprise, since my Labs profile was created years ago and under different light; both are more accurate than the default Adobe profile. I will eventually get around to creating a 'generic' profile for my Nikon, but that won't stop me from taking and using reference shots for profiles and reality-check comparison.

One other nice design feature that's worth mentioning is the little identifiers on the creative white balance target. The neutral squares are square with a little protrusion in the middle of one side; the warm/cool squares have one corner notched out, with + or - signs in varying size to indicate the amount of shift. This makes it easier to quickly tell what adjustment is being applied, even if it's a little out of focus. It's such a useful indicator that it took me three weeks to spot it. You know what they say about photographers: we have a gifted eye for detail.


Incidentally, Michael Reichmann's Luminous-Landscape.com website has always been a favourite of mine, even when I haven't agreed with him. (Can we say Olympus E-1?) He's certainly one of my top three influences for the writing, format, and approach of the camera portion of thewsreviews. I was working in the camera store when he bought the viewfinder for his GF1, and while I recognized him immediately, I didn't say hello. Maybe next time.

Pantone Huey monitor calibration system

Concept: 2 out of 5
Execution: 2 out of 5
Yeah, but: It does the basics, but without much more.


The (not very) Long Version: The Huey is a basic tool for calibrating a colour display, which is very important for photographers, and of varying importance for everyone else. But while the Huey is good, it doesn't really offer any control or features that make it anything more than a very basic product. It works. It's cheap. At the time it was introduced, it was the lowest price to hit the market, and I'm happy to have it. But if I was buying another one, I wouldn't buy this one - the Huey Pro includes some options for changing monitor gamma, and I'd look at it instead.


updated three years later: I've replaced the Huey with the X-rite ColorMunki Display with absolutely no regrets.

Lastolite 'ezybalance' folding grey card

Concept: 3 out of 5
Execution: 3 out of 5
Yeah, but: They're useful, cheap, and will actually improve your photographs. What else will do all that?

The Long Version: Grey cards and colour references aren't exciting things that photographers get together and talk about. Even dedicated gearheads can be intimidated by digital colour management, and for almost everyone the camera's idea of 'close enough' will be good enough. The more trusting photographers generally capture jpeg images, which institutionalizes the cameras' settings, and raw shooters have a 'fix it in photoshop' approach that leads to bad photographic hygiene.

But the reality is that a vast improvement in colour accuracy isn't difficult, and doesn't need to be a gateway to spyders, profiles, and multi-thousand-dollar monitors. This is easy. Sure, if it's art, go ahead and make everything green. But wouldn't it be best to know for certain what the scene actually looked like first?

I fully confess to being one of those people who shoots in raw and sorts them out later. And I'm not always the most diligent, either. But when colour accuracy matters, I start shooting frames like the one above. I can then select that photo and all of the ones taken in the same light - the ones after it, until the next grey frame - and synchronize the white balance in Lightroom without ever leaving the Library module. Six clicks and each set is done. I can colour-balance an entire shoot in less time that it has taken me to write this paragraph.

For people who shoot in jpeg capture, the sequence is even easier and more important. Point the camera at the grey card, press whatever buttons you need to to set a manual white balance, and you're done. Naturally you need to change it when the lighting changes, but that's true with anything other than the camera-knows-best Auto WB setting.

The main grey reference that I use is a Lastolite ezybalance [sic] folding / collapsible grey card. I have the small standard version, but they also make a waterproof model for dive photography, which I wanted until I saw its price. Their website is unusually useful, featuring some videos on how to use the product, and any gray card will work with the same instructions. For macro and small product photography I'll use one made from cardboard, which I've cut down to fit in the frame, and other times I'll go all-out and use a colour chart. But for general use I really appreciate the easybalance, as it's proven to be durable and the white side is also very handy for acting as a small reflector. It deploys to its full size with a quick flick, and the 12" size that I use is large enough to get an easy reading from. When I'm shooting it's natural to just tuck under my arm, or if I have two hands free I'll fold it and tuck it into my back pocket or camera bag. One of the larger sizes may be better if you need one to gauge the proper exposure, but I don't worry too much about that. After all, if I pay attention to the highlights, I can always fix it in post.

Updated to answer Jigme's question:

There are a couple of ways to shoot a reference frame. The one I use is to fill the frame (with a telephoto like the 35-100/2) by holding the card out at arms-length and trusting my E-3's auto white balance to get the temperature mostly right. (The E-3, like the E-1 and some Nikons, has a separate sensor to evaluate the ambient light.) This is the way to set a custom/manual white balance, but it's not the usual way to use a grey/white reference.

Any other time, such as with a wide-angle lens or with flash, is to include the grey card within the frame without actually taking it over. So when you have the lighting right (for studio flash) just include the grey card in one of the frames, and colour-correct them all from it in post. I typically do this in the last frame of the shoot, and after each major change in the lighting. If you're shooting one of those subjects that I avoid - things that move and talk - get one of them to hold it at some point.

But if you're shooting in mixed lighting, there's not much you can do for 'correct' white balance. All you can do is try to get the look right, which is going to be subjective and personal. A tool like this can be used to get the main subject 'right', but it's one of those times when good judgement is more important.

Carl Weese has written an excellent pair of articles on the subject over at TOP. Here are the links for Part One and Part Two.