I am sure the 3m stuff is great if it can be obtained. Thus far I have had no luck and being somewhat scientifically minded I cincerely like the idea of using glass designed for scietific use and is neutral.

I jkust may buy a piece of the stuff this week.

Anybody try Fruit of the Loom?

As one who doesn't drink coffee I was afraid that I was to be left behind with the latest technology but I decided to try what materials were available. As I suspected, there is a field expedient to be used only when you are out of reach of coffee. The same bubble wrap bag I use over my flash as a diffuser placed over the lens worked well to set WB as well.
http://home.comcast.net/~dougsmit/img_0791sm.jpg
This doubling of uses would cut down on the extra bulk added to the bag by the filters and offers a small degree of shock protection to the equipment. After all that was the original purpose of the bubble bag.
This leave open the question whether a Stofen could be used as an Expodisk or if either would protect items in transit?

After searching locally, I could only find a used Skylight filter as the basis for my project. I know Tom said above that he used the UV filter glass to support the filters. I also noticed that the Skylight filter I bought seems to have a very slight pink tint to it (the filtration element no doubt).

I am guessing that this slight pink tint will affect the WB reading, will it not? If so, I thought I would use a piece of that light diffuser material from Home Depot to support the pads. How does that sound?

Steve, I used a uv filter on the cam.lens side then the filter then a clear acrylic light diffusion panel for the front of the hickspodisc.ther is a pic of it on another thread in this forum titled L series hickspodisc.. I had only heard of the expoddisc but wasn't really sure what it did till this thread cam up. I didn't put any real thought into it when i thought of the filter, then i simply tryed it, and compared it to the coffee filters.To me it just seem to give a more natural look . then Jack Flesher got out his meter and took some reading with it and found out itwas with in 1/3 stop close enought for me ,cocedering i had never set WB before in my life. now I find I use it alot. it's like going from jpeg to raw.

Edited by THicks on Jan 24, 2004 at 09:47 AM GMT

hickspodisc

THicks wrote:
christo wrote:
It even washes the dirt spots on the closet door!

Man I knew someone was going to see those, I'll have to get onto the maid, Ouch , sorry honey I'll clean it right now.


lol. Awesome idea!

cute dog in your avatar btw, is it an akita?

-Kelvin

I carry an expodisk in my pocket at all times. No, I still don't trust the thing, but it does seem to do the job and stay in one piece.

Littlebike, actually, I did try it before I started the whole thing with the coffee filters. I needed it for workt and we ordered the whole bunch of it from Ednumnd Optics. Works great.

gfiksel wrote:
Littlebike, actually, I did try it before I started the whole thing with the coffee filters. I needed it for workt and we ordered the whole bunch of it from Ednumnd Optics. Works great.


So you have tried this and it works great. Have you compared it to the Hickspodisc? Is it better/worse/even with Hickspodisc?

A question for all of you on CWB if I set the CWB using the Coffeefilter or one of the other great ideas. How long does it stay and as long as I stay with the same light can I change lenses

Littlebike wrote:

So you have tried this and it works great. Have you compared it to the Hickspodisc? Is it better/worse/even with Hickspodisc?

Haven't compared it with Hickspodisc, but both CF and ground/opal glass give similar results visially as wells as by sampling a grey card.

Pardon my ignorance, what is CF?

Littlebike wrote:
Pardon my ignorance, what is CF?
Coffee Filters, of course

timzimmer wrote:
A question for all of you on CWB if I set the CWB using the Coffeefilter or one of the other great ideas. How long does it stay and as long as I stay with the same light can I change lenses

tim it will last as long as you want, and yes you can change lens.

Thank You,

I thought that was how it would work but the manual is not clear, I was worried that If I changed lenses or cf card the settinh might default.

Tim :

Geeebus...14 pages !!! i'm tired now

well after reading all 14 pages i have realized 2 things:
1- a lot of you people have too much time to wasre taking pictures in the house of sundry items.
2- the expodisc is still the most accurate/repeatable WB device available.

price vs accuracy. remember the term "close but no cigar". its fun but remember there will be differences in batches of filters. so you must invest in a real good colormeter to match color values in filter papers. thats what, only another $500 to do? that is of course your into accuracy which we seem to all agree can be lacking in the AWB system. but its all in fun, right?

the CF method is I am sure very good but when I shoot a wedding or Event I don't have time to slightly color correct 600-1200 images.

I have a 58mm expodisc and use 77mm lenses so I just hold it on the centre and use this as I cant see respending cash on one when the 58mm works fine

Anybody tried the brown coloured coffee filters you can buy in Germany - might give it a bit more warm tone.....

I'm surprised that no one has suggested good ol' Fruit of the Loom tiddy whities. Better value than coffee filters as they can have a second life as well.

blevey wrote:
What if you cut out the filter and sandwich them between 2 filters!!! wont look so strange...but should work?

Bob

Did anybody read Bob's suggestion? I started thinking about making one of these today and thought about the use of two filters with a respirator disc and light diffuser sandwiched between the two. I then decided to read ALL the posts in this thread to see if anyone else thought of the two-filter idea. I found that Bob did and wondered if anyone had paid attention to his excellent suggestion.

Instead of removing the retainer ring from a UV filter, it seems to me that it would be easier to just cut your materials to size and place them between two UV filters. Any thoughts on this? Patrick

Steve Moon asked where one could find the 3M round pre-filters. I've found them at the fourth paint store I visited. Purchased a package of ten filters. Does anyone wish to purchase a few of these filters from me?

Have a great day....

Roland Pang

I made something similar when I saw the price of the 77mm Expodisc. Since I almost always warm up my images a bit, I didn't see why absolutely accurate white balance would be that important as long as the results produced were relatively neutral.

It's comprised of two cheap 77mm UV filters with a piece of 3/16" white sign plex between the filters. I wet sanded the sign plex surfaces with 400 grit wet-dry paper to further defuse the light. Since the front threads are still available, I will attach a 82a, 82b, or 82c, or a combination to produce a warmer effect when converting the RAW image. I'll usually shoot several custom WB images, with and without the 82x filters so I have more choices during conversion.

After seeing this post I have decided to at least try some coffee filters to see if it produces more neutral results than the sign plex (the sign plex is quite good). This is why I had asked if anyone had tried 4 coffee filters in an earlier post. If I can find some of the 3M filters I'll try them also, but so far I haven't been able to find any, and I don't know the 3M part number to see if they are still available.