So now you are out shooting on the street or hiking in the mountains with continually changing light conditions. So how do you deal with establishing the correct white balance, you might ask?  I don’t carry along the Lastolite Ezybalance to set the white balance in my camera because it is too bulky but I do carry a small piece of foamcore (available at Michaels or any frame shop) that is quick and easy to use. Foamcore isn’t that rugged but the makeshift portable white reference card can be cut to a variety of sizes and the card I use is small enough to fit in my shirt pocket (2”x3.5”). If the card becomes bent or soiled I cut another one. For those of you that require a gray reference card to establish an in camera white balance you can purchase gray cards of varying sizes at your local camera shop or online. Because only with correct white balance can you be assured of accurate color in your photographs.

Shooting outside the studio just in case I don’t have time to set an in camera white balance I set my camera’s white balance to the lighting conditions I am shooting. But if I have time then upon starting to photograph I place the foamcore in the first photograph or set an in camera white balance. Then I shoot the photograph again without the foamcore card. By doing this I can establish a white balance for the series of photographs I take as the photographs can be batch processed with white balance correction. If the lighting changes I repeat the process with the foamcore. This way you will know your images can be color corrected quickly and easily without any fuss.

It might be prudent to explain a bit on why I match my white balance to the current lighting conditions. Sometimes I shoot both raw and jpg then I have the best of both however if you shoot in just jpg mode things are a little more complicated. With jpg’s the camera software will generate the settings which comprise the image. You can see how the image will be generated on the LCD display. No blank slate with jpg’s as in the raw images. Therefore, if you have your camera on one white balance setting such as daylight, cloudy etc. then you can batch process your jpg images as these images have the same white balance settings. I would “not” recommend setting your camera to auto white balance as this would make batch processing somewhat more time consuming as those images could have different white balance settings for each image.

So now the next question arises “What if I’m using flash?” When you are using flash the foamcore card must be shot from the same position and exposure as your final image. This is especially true when mixing ambient light and flash. If the flash is solely providing the lighting (no ambient or over powering the ambient) then the distance and exposure settings are less important as the color of the flash will remain relatively constant. For more detailed information on shooting with flash be sure to check out http://www.strobist.blogspot.com/.

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