I have been looking at the ExpoDisc for setting up my custom white balance. I wanted to get some feedback on it from photographers that use it or have used it before.
1. Do you use one?
2. Is it worth the money?
3. Does it have any advantages over a white or grey card?
4. Which one to buy Neutral or Portait for sports. I am assuming Neutral.
I do mostly indoor sports. I read that you put it on your lens and aim it directly at the light source snap the pic and set your WB to that image. Is that an advantage to putting a white card on the floor and snapping the pic?
I noticed that alot have been sold on here and wondering if that is because they are not worth it or do not work well.
I like the expodisc for the consitancy that it brings to my photographs. If you're shooting raw, adjusting the temp and tint can get you there too, but in my experience the expodisc gets me closer initially and I can choose to warm things up or cool things down if I want to make corrections. The proper way to use the expodisc is to stand in the spot where your subject will be, point your camera back to your shooting position and make an exposure with the expodisc on to capture the light falling on the subject in order to make a custom white balance. Where you have access to the shooting location, the expodisc works great but if you are at an event in which you do not have access to such as a sporting event where you're not allowed on the court for example, the expodisc or the various other targets will not work. The lallycap is like a shower cap that fits over your lens and can take a custom white balance just by being pointed at the scene. I don't have first hand experience with it but from reviews I have seen it renders the white balance a little cool. There are a lot of tools for custom white balance, check out what is available and what suits your application.
I found it largely worthless for most indoor sports because of the cycling lights. It can help you set the right WB for a particular moment in the lights cycle, but unless you fire every frame during that point in the cycle your WB is still going to have the typcal red/green shifts.
Also what I found rather annoying about it was that since they don't make on big enough for a lens like a 300 or 400mm, you then have to put on a shorter lens on your camera, do the WB, then switch your lens back to what you wanted to shoot with. Doesn't sound like a big pain at first, but when your shooting outdoors and the light is changing during the game from clouds moving etc, it becomes annoying IMHO
Honestly in most venues I shoot anymore, the AWB on the Nikon D3 is about as good as I can get it using any other means.
I certainly don't bother with even dialing in a custom WB setting 99% of the places I shoot, and I shoot RAW anyways under difficult mixed lighting situations
I am trying to get into the habit of shooting a frame that includes a small gray card at the beginning of each shoot. Seems to me that it's less hassle than fussing with something like the expodisc.
I own and use the EXPO DISC and find it useful. Also keep in mind that the EXPO DISC is calibrated to measure "EXPOSURE", hense the name EXPO DISC. It makes your camera act as an incident light meter. Like most things in life, one method may not be perfect under all conditions, so using a color checker and gray scale can also offer a sanity check.
I don't think there is anything special with the Expodisc, but I do think it is a good practice to use some kind of proper white balance card/tool when you have the chance. I find it very helpful to see what the "correct" WB is in different situations.
I put "correct" in quotes because I often find that the correct WB is not my favourite WB, I think of it as more of a colour cast removal tool.
Lastly, it is very important to use a proper WB device, not a traditional grey card. WB card, Expodisc, WhiBal, etc. Using a grey card is like trying to use a flashmeter to set WB, neither are designed for WB, they are designed for exposure. It is unfortunate that grey cards are grey, it is just so tempting to use them for WB. Personally I use the excellent and inexpensive WB card sold by Robin Myers.
aborr wrote:
I am trying to get into the habit of shooting a frame that includes a small gray card at the beginning of each shoot. Seems to me that it's less hassle than fussing with something like the expodisc.
Al
That certainly works well, and if you use a RAW software with an eyedropper tool its as easy as clicking on that for setting the correct WB, HOWEVER, this only works if the lighting doesn't change.
Start at shoot at 3pm on an overcast day and if by 4pm the clouds break, next thing you know your WB is thrown off. As such, its important to remember to reshoot your gray card at halftime, when you move the model to a new lcoation etc
As louhand alluded to, the ExpoDisc is used to measure INCIDENT light. So the question is, for the type of shooting that you do, can you measure the incident light? What I found is that most of the time, I can't measure the incident light (for example when shooting rock shows, I'm not permitted on stage, so the ExpoDisc is of no use and even if I could get on stage, the light changes all the time anyway.)
ken.vs.ryu mentioned a gray card, but the purpose of grey card is to measure REFLECTED light.
What I find is that I'm able to use the gray card more often than I'm able to use the ExpoDisc. If I had it to do all over again, I probably would NOT have invested in the ExpoDisc. Also, even using the grey card to perform a custom white balance on my camera, I sometimes find that the auto white balance actually does a better job. And while it's always nice to get it right in the camera, you can always adjust this all in post-processing anyway.
millsart wrote:
That certainly works well, and if you use a RAW software with an eyedropper tool its as easy as clicking on that for setting the correct WB, HOWEVER, this only works if the lighting doesn't change.
Start at shoot at 3pm on an overcast day and if by 4pm the clouds break, next thing you know your WB is thrown off. As such, its important to remember to reshoot your gray card at halftime, when you move the model to a new lcoation etc
I photograph a lot of (outdoor) horse shows. I use a WhiBal gray card before every class/event (about once every hour or so). Horses are problematic in that the color of their coat varies depending on how the light hits them, as well as changing when the color temperature of the light illiuminating them changes. I shoot raw, and in PP, I do one color correction for all the images from a single class. It doesn't result in perfectly uniform color, but at least the same horse appears more or less the same color in images taken at different points during the day.
Totally worth it for portraiture. I own one and use it for each new location when shooting outdor portraits. Takes a brief moment and saves a TON of time in post. Problem with gray cards - at least for me -- is that they can reflect light in different intensities based on angle to the lens and light. I stand where my subject is or will be, and shoot back to where I will be shooting from. By the time I walk to my shooting spot, I have the custom WB locked in and I'm ready to shoot. YMMV.
millsart wrote:
I found it largely worthless for most indoor sports because of the cycling lights. It can help you set the right WB for a particular moment in the lights cycle, but unless you fire every frame during that point in the cycle your WB is still going to have the typcal red/green shifts.
Also what I found rather annoying about it was that since they don't make on big enough for a lens like a 300 or 400mm, you then have to put on a shorter lens on your camera, do the WB, then switch your lens back to what you wanted to shoot with. Doesn't sound like a big pain at first, but when your shooting outdoors and the light is changing during the game from clouds moving etc, it becomes annoying IMHO
Honestly in most venues I shoot anymore, the AWB on the Nikon D3 is about as good as I can get it using any other means.
I certainly don't bother with even dialing in a custom WB setting 99% of the places I shoot, and I shoot RAW anyways under difficult mixed lighting situations...Show more →
Ever consider making one big enough for any consumer lens in the world with an old 40 watts circular fluorescent lamp cover?
Once in a while when changing the fluorescent lamp inside the white opaque lamp cover the plastic cover cracks. In order not to waste it and recycle the material I came out with the idea one day about a years ago to convert it to an expo disk. All one needs to do is use a cutter to cut around a circular mark drawn with a marker (leave some free area for expected cracking), than file it down to the exact circular shape with a metal file. This lamp cover are normally colour balance to represent daylight so is perfect for this application.
You see! Zero dollar and zero waste. 100% utilization and satisfaction.
And you are very right about the D3 or my D3x doing a very good job on the AWB, so the DIY expo disk only goes on my older Canon products.
Thanks for all of the information.
What I am trying to do is get my white balance set correctly for indoor volleyball. I currently use a Lastolite 12" white/18% grey. When I get to the gym I goto the court that we are playing on and put the Lastolight on the floor white side up in the middle hitter location (where my daughter plays) and set up my D90 white balance using Speed priority at 1/60th and use that image for the PRE. Is this correct? Should I use the grey side as zoetmb mentioned for reflective light?
ultimateguru wrote:
Thanks for all of the information.
What I am trying to do is get my white balance set correctly for indoor volleyball. I currently use a Lastolite 12" white/18% grey. When I get to the gym I goto the court that we are playing on and put the Lastolight on the floor white side up in the middle hitter location (where my daughter plays) and set up my D90 white balance using Speed priority at 1/60th and use that image for the PRE. Is this correct? Should I use the grey side as zoetmb mentioned for reflective light?
If you are shooting at the same gym with the same lighting condition, all you need to do is to take a few pictures in RAW during one of their practise session and change the color temperature in DPP (I am assuming you are using Canon because Nikon can do quite a good job on AWB) to the one you think most represent the actual color, than set your color temperature on the camera for that condition when you need it. This will give you a very good starting point even though at time you still need to fine tune it.
Good luck with you shoot.
hans98ko wrote:
If you are shooting at the same gym with the same lighting condition, all you need to do is to take a few pictures in RAW during one of their practise session and change the color temperature in DPP (I am assuming you are using Canon because Nikon can do quite a good job on AWB) to the one you think most represent the actual color, than set your color temperature on the camera for that condition when you need it. This will give you a very good starting point even though at time you still need to fine tune it.
Good luck with you shoot....Show more →
Do the lights cycle in this gym ? If so your always going to end up with color cast because there isn't any fixed white balance to set, the lights will cycle at 60hz and depending where in the cycle they are when you hit the shutter, your color shift is going to be made better or worse
In that type of situation its really best to just shoot RAW and adjust the keepers as needed
Seems to me the ExpoDisc is handy when you can't get a grey card in the lighting you're trying to balance. Tom Hicks has examples of snakes inside enclosures - no way to get the grey card in there.
He perfected a DIY version called the Hickspodisk. A piece of 3M respirator material sandwiched between two filters. I made one and it worked well for me shooting indoor basketball, but not for hockey - I liked setting a CWB off the ice better. I don't have occasion to use it much anymore.
Anyway, Tom's old post from July 2005 on how to make it vanished, but not before I had made a pdf of it. Tom gave me permission to distribute it, so if anyone wants it, send me an email and I'll send it to you.
millsart wrote:
Do the lights cycle in this gym ? If so your always going to end up with color cast because there isn't any fixed white balance to set, the lights will cycle at 60hz and depending where in the cycle they are when you hit the shutter, your color shift is going to be made better or worse
In that type of situation its really best to just shoot RAW and adjust the keepers as needed
It also helps to shoot at a shutter speed that is a multiple of the cycle. 1/60, 1/120, 1/200 (close enough to 1/180 in my experience), if at all possible.
This is obviously tricky with sports unless you have a hell of a lot of flash power, but it's a good little thing to keep in mind.
