Paul C. Buff, Inc. Technical Forum

So, when i shoot, do i use white balance (lighting symbol) to match the strobes, or daylight? when i shoot with lighting white balance the pics seems more better but day light does too..

or do you custom white balance with light meter such as C.C?

Please help?

Lightning bolt is typically 6000K to match for a speedlite (this will vary, so check your manual). Sunshine is for daylight white balance (5400-5600K). From the tube, the light that is emmited from our flashes is 5600K. However, different modifiers, even of the same brand (any brand) will alter the color cast.

Ideally, you will want to do a custom white balance, either by setting a custom balance in camera before the shoot, or bytaking a reference shot for use in post production.

how would you do it? WB Gray card?

The way I do it is to start on daylight whitebalance. This gets me close for review. Very far off color balance can indicate clipping on the histogram, which may or may not be accurate for the final image. I then shoot a white balance target. Here we use Michael Tapes WhiBal cards, and they do well. There are a million other products on the market to do the same job, some better than others. Just make sure is is designed for white balance. Old Kodak gray cards from the 70's onward are not color neutral, only 18% gray.

Once the reference photo has been taken, continue to shoot. Anytime major changes are made (modifier, location, big changes in lighting, etc.) take another reference shot. You can then open all of the shots in that series in Photoshop or Lightroom or iPhoto. Select all images, and sample the target in the first photo. All photos selected will change to that white balance.

Of course, this only works in RAW.