Hi!

When I'm shooting indoors with studio strobes I shoot in raw and use a grey card to set the white balance later. Every time I change the power of the strobe or the distance from the strobe to the model, I take one shot with the model holding the card. My question is: is this necessary or I just need to take *one* image with the model and the grey card in the beginning of the shoot? The color temperature of the strobe is the same no matter it's power settings or distance to the subject or am I wrong here?

When I'm shooting indoors with studio strobes I shoot in raw and use a grey card to set the white balance later. Every time I change the power of the strobe or the distance from the strobe to the model, I take one shot with the model holding the card. My question is: is this necessary or I just need to take *one* image with the model and the grey card in the beginning of the shoot? The color temperature of the strobe is the same no matter it's power settings or distance to the subject or am I wrong here?

No. I've never even seen let alone used a grey card. Ever. I always leave WB to Auto and I shoot JPEG. It saves time and storage and works just fine for me.

In studio, I eyeball the WB in ACR, but it is usually around 5700, which is the temp of the AB bulbs, IIRC.

I think you are correct, I was thinking they are 5600. I'm not at the eyeballing stage yet, using the gray card for a while will help get me there, though.

I'm shooting with Elinchrome and they're on 5600 K, I setup this manually in the camera.

Disorderly is correct.
The Paul C Buff Einsteins maintain their color temperature throughout the power range.
They have dual settings, one for constant color and one for super short flash duration.

Alien Bees and White Lightening (also both from Paul C Buff) do change color temperature as the power settings change. They get warmer at the lower settings.

If using Bees/White Lightning strobes, it is necessary to take a new gray card reading every time power output is adjusted, if you wish to be color accurate through your workflow.
This is not necessary with the Einsteins.

I own both and find this to be true via empirical evidence.

Agree with what's been said above, but for what it's worth, I've found it much easier to adjust the white balance in the camera after shooting the gray card rather than doing it in Photoshop.  I've found it to be a time saver - especially when making my first pass at culling bad images.

I shoot Canon - it's really easy.  Take a picture of the gray card, view the picture on the back of the camera, select white balance,  then choose custom white balance from the menu.

Yep, we just did that yesterday in class. But I have a question...

I'm shooting with Elinchrome and they're on 5600 K, I setup this manually in the camera.

Xalanx, I haven't checked my Canon 50D yet, but thought I would ask you...so you can set a custom white balance by temperature? If my 50D can, that would be even easier than shooting the gray card and adjusting in PS.

The Paul C Buff Einsteins maintain their color temperature throughout the power range.
They have dual settings, one for constant color and one for super short flash duration.

Alien Bees and White Lightening (also both from Paul C Buff) do change color temperature as the power settings change. They get warmer at the lower settings.

Good info to know, thanks disorderly and graffoto. So my teacher was only half right. 

Cathy, I don't have the 50D, but I am quite confident that you can. For my 5D and 5D II I can set the white balance to "K" and then set up the temperature in the menu.

Quote from: ruigsantos on September 15, 2011, 05:56

When I'm shooting indoors with studio strobes I shoot in raw and use a grey card to set the white balance later. Every time I change the power of the strobe or the distance from the strobe to the model, I take one shot with the model holding the card. My question is: is this necessary or I just need to take *one* image with the model and the grey card in the beginning of the shoot? The color temperature of the strobe is the same no matter it's power settings or distance to the subject or am I wrong here?

No. I've never even seen let alone used a grey card. Ever. I always leave WB to Auto and I shoot JPEG. It saves time and storage and works just fine for me.

I specialize in studio Lighting and teach it and have long before this business was even thought of being a working Product/portrait photographer since the middle 60's. I used grey cards for exposure for many years. I use auto WB now. The difference between 5600 and 5700 is Very < very small. Im a pure Manual shooter except for  unless Im trying something different. A complete understanding of WB is critical in Digital. As is the Complete understanding Of the principals of DOF and how it relates to distance from Subject and focal length Used. It is the foundation Of Photography. In the film days we had 2 choices, Now we have Hundreds. Digital is great but unfortunately it has spawned a whole lot of Lazy Photographers thinking there gonna fix it Later. This is penny stock Guys, The more you twiddle, The less you make. I shoot Raw for clients and Jpg for stock. Why? because I nail it first time. levels adj and Im done. For a possible 38 cents cost effectively it makes no sense not to. IMHO.  Glad to see a Photo thread instead of another IS thread. LOL

Also...Age of your flash tubes. they start yellowing with age.

everybody has their workflow thats for sure, RAW opens up a lot of "advantages", sure it will take you more 2 minutes on CR and then converting but overall IMO it is really worth, perhaps a lot more helpful outdoor where we cannot control light as easy

Quote from: gostwyck on September 15, 2011, 06:26

Quote from: ruigsantos on September 15, 2011, 05:56

When I'm shooting indoors with studio strobes I shoot in raw and use a grey card to set the white balance later. Every time I change the power of the strobe or the distance from the strobe to the model, I take one shot with the model holding the card. My question is: is this necessary or I just need to take *one* image with the model and the grey card in the beginning of the shoot? The color temperature of the strobe is the same no matter it's power settings or distance to the subject or am I wrong here?

No. I've never even seen let alone used a grey card. Ever. I always leave WB to Auto and I shoot JPEG. It saves time and storage and works just fine for me.

I specialize in studio Lighting and teach it and have long before this business was even thought of being a working Product/portrait photographer since the middle 60's. I used grey cards for exposure for many years. I use auto WB now. The difference between 5600 and 5700 is Very < very small. Im a pure Manual shooter except for  unless Im trying something different. A complete understanding of WB is critical in Digital. As is the Complete understanding Of the principals of DOF and how it relates to distance from Subject and focal length Used. It is the foundation Of Photography. In the film days we had 2 choices, Now we have Hundreds. Digital is great but unfortunately it has spawned a whole lot of Lazy Photographers thinking there gonna fix it Later. This is penny stock Guys, The more you twiddle, The less you make. I shoot Raw for clients and Jpg for stock. Why? because I nail it first time. levels adj and Im done. For a possible 38 cents cost effectively it makes no sense not to. IMHO.  Glad to see a Photo thread instead of another IS thread. LOL

Hi everyone,

Firstly, I don't understand if you know the white balance of your light, why would you choose auto WB? Auto WB will change from image to image. If my lights are 5700 or 5600 I simply set my camera to that WB and in the post-processing, with just a little (or no) tweak, everything looks fine. WB is very important for digital photography, as we all know, so why should we let the camera decide which WB is best, if we already know it?
Your comment doesn't make complete sense, if you are using auto WB in a studio you create more work for yourself in the post-proccessing. If you already have the correct WB, then you don't have to fix it in the end, so you have 1 less step to do.

Kone

Quote from: gostwyck on September 15, 2011, 14:07

Quote from: rinderart on September 15, 2011, 13:13

This is penny stock Guys, The more you twiddle, The less you make. I shoot Raw for clients and Jpg for stock. Why? because I nail it first time. levels adj and Im done. For a possible 38 cents cost effectively it makes no sense not to.

Exactly. I've never understood why so many photographers always try to make things as hard as possible for themselves. It is completely unnecessary __ but I'm kind of glad that they do so.

respect your right to do any workflow you please, and obviously it works for you...but I don't know why anyone would shoot jpeg when you can shoot raw. I just wouldn't. the only time I might do this is if shooting editorial that is being fed directly to media (and I nail in-camera in these scenarios)....or if I'm traveling and shooting personal images that will never be processed as 'work'. I'm quite surprised when you say that you shoot in jpeg. you've said it a few times here.

exactly! I believe it is more that speech: I am a f**king photograher, I shoot 10 pictures and I got 11 after

we aren�t talked the same stuff for sure.. we are talking about RAW or JPG, not about heavy post-processing.. masking, cloning, whatever is done on photoshop or gimp or other..

shooting JPG you can nail whatever you want, I nail it on camera too and still shoot on RAW but I am not 100% sure of the exposure (if I need to go a little forward or backward) I am not sure if the AUTO WB is working nicely and if I am getting warmer or colder temperature.. if you use AUTO and not using RAW I am sure you will have crap when you look in the computer, you can�t adjust AUTO WB on your camera, or you are shooting crazy until the AUTO is nice?