Dexter and Oscar pic

[bitkahuna]

What do u guys think of this? My favorite 2 subjects who behaved for once.

Talk about difficult getting exposure right with a BLACK dog and a WHITE cat!

[Hameed]

Awesome pic Paul!!!

I can't make any intelligent comments about the photography as I am not an expert....

[bluelex]

thats such a tough shot. with the two oppisite colors and also to get them in perfect non movement no blur what so ever i see. great shot..

[Percy]

They're not fighting?!?! IF they were, that should give you enough blurred results to produce an 18% gray card...

A gray card is used for exposure balance and to give a frame of reference to remove any color casts. Should have used this when I photographed Linda O'Neil. Theory behind it is that if you take pretty much ANY scene and smear all the colors together, you should get something that looks like a gray card.

Great shot though! Very very tough to get contrast on two subjects right!

Percy

[brendanlim]

Nice shot Paul. I really like the contrast of Dexter and Oscar What lens did you use for this? Was it the 50mm?

Originally Posted by Percy

A gray card is used for exposure balance and to give a frame of reference to remove any color casts. Should have used this when I photographed Linda O'Neil. Theory behind it is that if you take pretty much ANY scene and smear all the colors together, you should get something that looks like a gray card.

Percy, do you have a good tutorial or anything that you could link us to about gray cards? I've heard about them a lot but never quite understood....

[bitkahuna]

Thanks everyone. Percy, they only play fight now and then - they're good buddies!

Originally Posted by brendanlim

What lens did you use for this? Was it the 50mm?

Yes. I shot a bunch in rapid fire and this was the one I liked best.

[bitkahuna]

Originally Posted by brendanlim

Percy, do you have a good tutorial or anything that you could link us to about gray cards? I've heard about them a lot but never quite understood....

The book I have from shortcourses.com covers exposure nicely. As Percy said, cameras assume the 'average' of the exposure area is what an 18% gray card would look like in the same light. I said the exposure area because as you know you have three metering modes on your camera (how the camera calculates available light)

[Percy]

Brendan,

Here's an interesting link.

http://home.nc.rr.com/tspadaro/The_Grey_Card.html

Seems to be others selling "digital" gray cards with a different surface reflectance. In most cases, I use the standard metering pattern on my Canon. If it's a "hot" sunset, then I switch over to partial to take a pic and then to spot to take a pic. Getting a difficult subject properly exposed is kinda tricky, but the pic of the black dog and nearly all white cat was nicely done.

Gray cards can also be used as a rough baseline for color balance. If I'm using tungsten hotlights (300 watt to 500 watt studio bulbs), then a gray card is used for the first exposure. Then I can adjust the settings in Photoshop for a neutral setting (all RGB levels the same) to remove any color casts. This was when I was shooting film. In digital it's much easier...just select the light source that you're shooting with. In most cases, the Auto White Balance of the Canons seem to do just fine. If it misses, then there's always the Phase One RAW conversion software. Just pick a spot thats supposed to be white and then click on it. Bingo...color cast gone!

Percy

Originally Posted by brendanlim

Nice shot Paul. I really like the contrast of Dexter and Oscar What lens did you use for this? Was it the 50mm?



Percy, do you have a good tutorial or anything that you could link us to about gray cards? I've heard about them a lot but never quite understood....