From the course: Photography Foundations: Night and Low Light

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Correcting white balance with a gray card

Correcting white balance with a gray card

From the course: Photography Foundations: Night and Low Light

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Correcting white balance with a gray card

The White Balance eyedropper in Camera Raw, or really just about any other RAW converter software, is a great way to fix white balance: single-click and bang, your colors all fall into place. The problem with working in low light is it's often very difficult to tell what in the image was originally gray or white. In other words, what is a good target to be sampling off of for your white balance? Also, because you are working in low light, you probably got your ISO up. If you are working with a camera that's very noisy, even though you might see a patch on the screen that you know is supposed to be gray, the pixel you click on might actually be a green or purple color. So it can just be a little bit difficult to work with that White Balance dropper when you're shooting in low light. If you are very picky about white balance, if you want to be sure that you can come home and very easily correct your white balance consider carrying a white balance card with you. That's what I did here. I…

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