Proper way to use a grey card?

scottduffy

scottduffy

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Hi guys,

I bought a grey card to help with exposure and a guy in my class who's a fantastic landscape photographer is telling me I should always use the white side and save the image and use it as my custom white balance but my lecturer is telling me it should always be the grey side. I'm thinking since its called a grey card she might be correct but just thought I'd ask. Why is there two colours to begin with? Slightly confused. It's a lastolite one and came without instructions.
 
A mid-grey card is used for exposure setting. It should give you the same reading as an incident light meter. If it is neutral grey (they're not always) then it can also be used for white balance.

White is often recommended for white balance as a test image is less likely to contain noise that might skew things, but any shade of neutral grey/white (equal quantities of red, blue, green) should also be fine. Not all grey cards sold for white balance are suitable for exposure setting as they're too light.
 
Thanks guys. I assumed they were all used to correctly expose a scene when conditions are tricky such as snow or studio lighting. I'll watch a few videos and check out the one I bought online to see what it says.
 
As others have said above, it can be used to get a decent exposure starting point or depending on which grey card it can be used to also set custom white balance.
This can be done in camera by taking a photo of the card or in edit.

However after buying grey cards, colour checkers and using them, I now find that you are better off exposing to get as much detail as possible in the histogram and adjusting exposure and white balance in edit (I use lightroom) unless of course you want that blown out over exposed look.
 
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