> I own a gray card but I almost never use it. I usually set the white
> balance where it looks good to me. Sometimes even a bit towards the
> one or the other side depending on the mood I want to have in the
> picture. I don't care too much about "exact" physical white balance.
I completely agree that the final white balance in the picture is an
artistic choice. Some pictures are well served by having whites be
white; others are much better with explicit color casts in various
directions depending on the photo.
What I like grey cards and other source of technically correct white
balances for is as a starting point. I'm not confident of my own ability
to accurately judge tints, especially subtle ones, so getting the white
balance technically correct is something I find useful to take all
of that out of the picture. If I've neutralized all tints, I can be
confident that anything I put back in is there deliberately and through
choice, and isn't just an accident that I didn't notice (but that other
people may).
('That other people may notice' is really the thing I worry about. I'm
not willing to trust that I won't accidentally overlook a semi-subtle
tint in the photograph that other people will notice right away because
they're coming to the picture without preconceptions and without having
seen it before. I have certainly done similar things before, where a
picture looked perfectly good to me when I initially processed it but
then I came back a month later and realized that oh gosh the whole thing
had a weird tint that I'd completely overlooked.)
- cks
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