White balance techniques 95
image sensor for a faster, easier, and more accurate White
Balance correction. This produces excellent results, even in
mixed light. Simply place the ExpoDisc in front of your lens,
and capture the incident light while setting your camera’s Custom
White Balance. ExpoDisc Digital White Balance Filters are
available with quick pressure release mounts in six standard
sizes—58 mm, 62 mm, 67 mm, 72 mm, 77 mm, and 82 mm—
and in fl ats for modular fi lter systems.
Our friends at ShootSmarter (www.shootsmarter.com) offer
another kind of Custom White Balance target. Three different
sizes of their Balance Smarter pop-up panels are available to fi ll
the needs of most photographers. Each Balance Smarter has a
digital neutral white on one side and a digital neutral gray on
the other. The center mark in the middle of each panel is for your
autofocus to grab onto so you don’t have to turn off autofocus
to make a Custom White Balance. The smallest (12-inch panel)
is great for on-the-go location photographers, whereas the larger
models (20- and 30-inch panels) work well for portrait and
studio shooters. The panels have both a neutral white and a
neutral gray side, and prices range from $40 to $85.
Color Space
Many cameras also offer a Color Space option that is très différent from Color Balance. The Color Space
options that are available in a digital SLR’s custom settings are typically Adobe RGB and sRGB. It seems simple:
just pick one. Here’s the problem in a nutshell: sRGB (Standard RGB) was created in 1999 with a goal of
producing color consistency between hardware devices. Defi ning a gamut of colors, sRGB represents each color
well and can be used by CRT monitors, LCD screens, scanners, printers, and digital cameras. sRGB has been
incorporated into many Web browsers to make sure the colors on Web pages match the color scheme of the
operating system. Because of the color consistency it creates, most hardware devices that work with images now
use sRGB as the default setting. All of which sounds very inviting, doesn’t it?
Adobe RGB is designed for photographers whose work will appear in print, and offers a broader range of colors
than sRGB does. If you want to really make yourself crazy, you can Google “sRGB vs. Adobe RGB” and read
opinions from a wide range of viewpoints. Being a pragmatist, I suggest you do the same thing with this Color
Space argument as you do with the 8-bit vs. 16-bit controversy. Shoot some tests, make some prints, and then
decide. This is the way we worked back in the fi lm days, and the methodology is still valid today, even if the tools
are a little different.
Facing lighting challenges indoors
One of the biggest advantages of digital capture instead of fi lm
when working under all kinds of weird lighting conditions is that
you can capture and color-correct images without using on-
camera fi lters. For many digital SLR owners, the temptation is
to set the camera on Auto White Balance and blast away. Most
of the time, that’s a pretty safe approach. Other times we hear
people say, “I’ll fi x it later in Photoshop,” but our answer is,
“Why waste time when you can capture it correctly in the fi rst
place?” If you’re wondering how, here are a few suggestions.
