Grey Cards

[cmitchd]

I didn't want to totally hijack Fred's post about downloading images, but I do want to say thanks to those of you that welcomed me here in that thread. I've got a lot to learn, but luckily for me there seems to be a good number of very knowledgable people here that don't mind sharing and helping.

Anyway, so I want to pick up a grey card (grey or gray? I always get confused). The only "Photo" store within a 30 minute drive from my house is a Wolf Camera that sells tripods and 35mm film...not much help for me.

I want to order some grey cards, but the only place I've found so far is wolfcamera.com who sells a 3-pack (4x5 and 8x10) Kodak for $15.

I was hoping some of you guys would point me to the $2 cards you've mentioned in other posts.

Since I'm too impatient to wait and too lazy to drive the hour and a half or so to Atlanta to look for specialty shops, I decided to try to make one for temporary use. I found an online digital photography textbook (very beta, but some good basic info I guess) that has a section on middle grey.

In that section there's a grayscale chart consisting of 11 steps and they consistently refer to scenes averaging "middle grey" ..... so I opened up the gimp, used the eyedropper deal to snatch up the middle grey color from that chart, and printed it as a full page. It came out as #959595 which looks like this:



All technology weaknesses to this approach aside, what do you think? Even remotely close to your cards?

Just kind of as an aside, I found a discussion of whether or not the average should be 13% or 18% ... to be honest I'm still a little unsure about what exactly the percentage is referring to ... I guess trying to cram years of study into a week's crash-course has created more questions than answers for me. Maybe I should buy some books.

I'm going to go play with my homemade gray-ish card and see what happens...


Mitch

[floridafred]

Hey Mitch:
I think the proof of how close your grey card might be to the 18%, $15.00 variety will be in the results. As I mentioned in a previous post I use a file folder that looks very close to your example. It works for me so no need to go further. If yours works and your results are satisfactory I'd stick with it.
I personally don't think there is anything magic about a $5.00 grey card. I think your idea of printing your own is a great one and I'm going to try it myself.

[SharpByCoop]

Funny, but grey cards are being phased out due to automatic settings on the camera's these days. This is what was told to me. I called two longtime camera shops in my area, and both of them stopped carrying them. They could 'order' it for me.... ####.

I did the same thing, and did a search for a digital version myself. I didn't find something perfect, but I found a grey sheet of paper that will do the job 'close enough' for me to experiment further.

Coop

[Terrill Hoffman]

Very, very few people with a camera will ever get into photography enough to learn what a graycard (18%) is used for. At the same time, with all of the auto cameras around, very few people will ever use a hand held light meter.
At fifty-two I find myself turning into my grandfather. The phrase "back in my day" is being used more and more. Even with the latest and greatest, I shoot everything on manual. By using a incident light meter, you are measuring the amount of light that hits the subject, not the light being reflected.

[cwp]

When I was heavily into B&W photography and printing my own images, I always printed my gray cards. In PageMaker, you can set the percent gray of a fill, and then fill an area (page). If I can find somewhere to host the image, I will create a pdf with a set of gray cards (12, 15, 18%), then anyone could print them. I have recently changed ISPs due to a move, and don't currently have a web site set up. If someone is willing to host this PDF, I could have it out this weekend.

--Carl

[murrphy]

check this thread

http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/sh...hreadid=267733

the background is as close as you need and look at the image with the hand. skin tones are great.

the blade looks dead on as does the green linen micarta

see the post re the Port Stanley show to see the background I mostly use at home or at a show

interestingly, it is not only gray that works just fine. It is the reflectance level that is of concern.

This one does not work bad either.

Dan Farr hunter. 1084/California Walnut and actually 24K gold/NS guard and ebony spacer. Very lightweight but perfect balance

[whv]

got here late-
.
another welcome to ckdf, mitch.
.
carl - check out jamey's offer if you still need a host for ckdf stuff.

[Jamey Saunders]

Sorry, I haven't been following this thread, but I do want to say to Carl: If you need a place to host those PDF's, email them to me, and I'll put them on my server. I'm a little fuzzy on whether my photo hosting script will accept PDF's. I know it will accept video files, etc., but I'm not sure about PDF's.

[cwp]

Jamey,

I sent you an e-mail. I have the PDF with 12,13,15,and18% grey pages created. This has also been created as a CMYK instead of RGB so it should print better.

--Carl

[Jamey Saunders]

Sorry I haven't gotten back to you today. I got the file uploaded, and it can be downloaded from:

http://www.internetbusinesslinks.net/grey_card.pdf