I've found myself in several situations during the holidays that have left me with no white reference on some of my photos. This is usually in people's living rooms or something where a neutral patch is not available. I'm needing something that I can use as a reference.

Is there any difference between cheapo cards and more expensive ones?

I've been interested in picking up a gray card too, so even though I don't have anything to add, I'm definitely interested in the responses. I'd like to start getting the WB right in the field as opposed to doing it in PP as it slightly affects the exposure/highlights when I adjust it.

WhiBal - every single one is checked before it leaves the seller: http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/.../purchase.html

You could get something a little cheaper of course, but unless you lose stuff all the time, why not buy it once and have it last a lifetime?

http://www.rawworkflow.com/products/whibal/index.html

That's the one I was looking at but I was thinking 29 bucks for the small one was a little steep. If it's as good as you say and it says it is, I imagine it's worth it.

Heh heh, yep, same one. Worth it unless you expect to lose a few of them. You could get the reference one, and cut it up into several pieces

That'd be a neat thing to have.

I have the medium & small whiBal. I odn't use them a lot, but they are handy and they are supposedly guaranteed to be neutral. The ones I have are as neutral as needed for photography. I've seen a lot of gray cards that I would not use, however, as they can have serious tints.

I use my lens cloth....

Srsly--it is a lens cloth that is 18% gray. It's not perfect, but it works and it's clipped to my bag so I always know where to find it.

I use a sheet of paper....

Sure it's not "perfectly white" but it's close enough I can never tell the difference.

the cloth ones that fold up and are also lens cloths are great.

the small "digital grey cards" i find to be useless and expensive?

i cant remember what brand mine is but its cardboard and i dig it.

ok got this puppy in the mail today


It's about the size of a business card. I think I'll find some way to attach it to the body of my camera and make use of the sweet ass lanyard it came with.

That looks interesting. I've been thinking about getting one of these, especially for times when I'm photographing indoors under weird lighting. I'm just curious whether I'd actually use it and how much it would help me. Hmmmm. Maybe something for when I have a little more money, or on the wish list.
Reed

My friend got an Expo disc to try from the company (He works for Edmund optics). He wasn't that impressed with it, but I'm not sure he really knew what to do with it either. I'd like to try one but I'm not going to spend $70+ to figure out if it does what I want.

Same here, still nice to have a neutral reference in the scene to use at times.

Yeah I'll agree with thomps but as said above shooting indoors you sometimes end up with funky lighting and no white reference anywhere in the shoot.

Make sure they're the white kind though, or it probably won't work as well...

<--- has been know to use printer paper. Yes it's all slightly different color, but it's better than not using a CWB...