For many years, I have been recommending the Photovision 14" One Shot Digital Target for use in performing Custom White Balancing for digital cameras. While other custom white balance tools are available, this particular device allows you to correct your camera's white balance and then also confirm AND FIX again the white balance in Adobe Lightroom. This is something many other white balance tools can't do.
But at a selling price of $39.95 on the B&H website, it's often more than some photographers are willing to pay. Personally, I think it is way overpriced as well, but well worth paying to get perfect color balance.
Recently, I decided to see if I could find a less expensive alternative for my students. I found one device on Amazon.com and decided to buy it to test it out. The cost was only $9.28.
While it looked promising, after testing it out, I found that it was close, but still off. The 18% grey seemed darker and slightly "off-grey" compared to the Photovision target. It still produced a much better color balance than auto white balancing did on my Nikon D750, but it wasn't perfect. The Photovision target produced a much truer color.
So while it's better than not having anything to produce custom white balanced images, it's not the same as the Photovision target. I'd recommend it if you were on a budget and wanted something to use for custom white balancing your camera, but I would not recommend it if you want truer white balanced images. It seems so far, the Photovision target is still the way to go.
There may be other devices out there that can compete against the Photovision target, but I'm not willing to purchase them all to try to find it. For me, the Photovision target seems the most reliable. Plus you can set your white and black levels too in Lightroom using the white and black panels.
The image above was taken with a Nikon D750 and Nikon 24-120mm f4.0 ED lens. Custom white balancing for the shot was done with the Photovision target.
No comments:
Post a Comment