CharleyL
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I'm not finding the gray target that I have, but even one of these in this link below will do the job. For these, you just need to fan them out so a good amount of each can be seen. Then take a "Test Shot" of them in the lighting that you will be using, be it flash, constant, or room light. Then use it as a sample for checking the color balance of the shoot that follows in this same light. During post you can set the white balance by sampling the gray card color, or go further and use the black and white cards to assure that what appears to be total black and total white is also correct.
For what I do now, I just depend on my newer cameras "Auto White Balance settings" for most of my work. The better cameras made in the last 10 years or so have managed to get this Auto Setting quite good, and the manual checking and corrections just aren't necessary for most work. It's no longer something to fret over.
But some times you will want an area of your shot to be totally white or totally black, and the lighting during the shot didn't quite make it perfect, let's say it's the background, and you want it to be totally white or black, maybe because of some light spill or improper positioning of one of your lights during the shoot. With the three white balance color cards in the first shot, In POST you can then correct the color of these areas using your color sampling tool, to sample the card of your choice and correct the area of the shot so it's totally black or white. I do this mostly when touching up product and still life shots and it's usually the background that needs the change. The gray is the one that you will mostly be using when setting your camera when manually correcting the white balance of the camera. So all three will be needed at one time or another, and size isn't all that important, as long as you take your "test shot" as your first shot of each shoot where it is easy enough in POST to get a good sample from the photo of it with the sampling tool. It doesn't matter whether it is a 3' X 3' square folding target, or just these three small business card size samples. You will get good results anyway, if you use it right.
The link below just shows these three small cards on a lanyard at a good price, but they are available most anywhere that sells photo gear, but probably at higher prices. I have a set of these too, but rarely use them, probably because I started with the bigger targets and tend to reach for one of them first, but they really aren't necessary. So my spring wire folding targets tend to get used more often. Only the one large spring wire target that I have has the three vertical white, gray, black stripes. The smaller one in my field kit is just gray on one side and white on the other. I open it, hand it to the model, and tell them to hold it in front of them and take the shot. Then usually fold it and put it away. That first shot can then be used in POST if any color corrections are necessary, I have used the white side a few times as a reflector, when doing a few "really close," close-ups in outdoor portrait shoots, All set the gray scale calibration in the camera the same, but Auto Gray Scale in modern good cameras almost eliminates the need for these,, for most of what you will want to shoot, especially if you aren't a Professional Photographer.
If you are not shooting professionally, the cards like in the link below are small, easy to carry, and do the gray scale calibration very well. I have several professional photographer friends that use them. My spring wire gray scale targets are quite old, but still do what I need. I purchased one in 1998 shortly after I went totally digital, then the second when starting to do more studio type shooting, and well before actually building my own photo/video studio, so probably about 20 years ago. These small cards in the link weren't available back then, but large 8 X 10 or so gray cards were, and I have or had some of them at one time too, again many years ago. I think I was using Photoshop 6.0 when I had them, to give you some idea of the ancient photography history that I'm referring to. If this is your first purchase of a gray card to set your camera, just buy a set of cards like these in the link below. They will do all you need, and will be easy to carry in your camera bag. But hanging it around your neck won't make you even look like a Professional Photographer. If we use them at all, it's just for the first shot, so why have I hanging from your neck?
I don't use cell phone cameras, except to take photos of product labels, so I can enlarge them to read them, my great, great grand daughter (3) is tough to catch in an interesting shot unless I happen to be fully ready and holding one of my better cameras when it happens, and the dog that we had always disappeared whenever she saw me holding one of my better cameras, so this kind of shot is when I have used my cell phone camera. It is good for what I sometimes need it for, as it automatically does everything that it can to take a good well lit photo no matter the situation, and that is not the kind of photography that I prefer doing. I always want to control the light levels and where the light falls in my shots, then set the camera manually to get the result that I'm looking for. Cell phone cameras are for the "Point and Shoot" crowd, but mostly not for what I do.
Charley
https://www.amazon.com/Balance-Exposed-Camera-Checker-Calibration/dp/B0GC6K8H2B/ref=sr_1_77?crid=1XXV69HHOB4TO&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.bY4XEb0HubLDlprjw9Vgj4Yh8-YfGSbU7mTC9pss_EE2yZnmj5LaiT15TuOlB5F2w5qSJ3Lh2NBo_hNeopuyUNdclsFb_PIKMQCp6LjIONt3HEV37_LtlJPSUbU_21I-ikPWkfvgvBEUZmpLNkRdaR_o2sKkt9eQHiNEb7R6IQZiEqhCysFanhASuItQGjvP5heyNG6-dRcFGZ_4VfQD8g.C_DEA-bqsLhSolPlHH6iPjrqKd965zWgWNBnJOgtt1g&dib_tag=se&keywords=white+balance+card+photography&qid=1771342466&sprefix=white+balance+card%2Caps%2C214&sr=8-77&xpid=GlcM8YYIIs506
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