Pleasant Experience with Expodisc

[jsjxyz]

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Just bought Expodisc, and want to highly recommend it to M8 users.

 

I bought the 77mm ring just in case if I can use if I bought big zoom lens for DSLR. And when using with 39mm and 60mm Leica lenses, I just hand held it in front of my lens.

 

This is my workflow using the Expodisc, it is a one step to set White Balance "+" Exposure setting.

 

1. Put the WB to Custom

2. Set the Speed to A, and largest Aperature setting

3. Point to the source of light (or mix lighting), treat it just like insident light meter.

4. Shoot the WB.

5. Preview it and notice the Speed chosen.

6. Set the Speed to the correspond speed in white balance shot.

 

That's all, a happy accurate shooting. WB and Exposure is done.

 

Who needs shooting RAW, if you can get the perfect WB.

 

Jerry

[erl]

Jerry,

 

To answer your question, I need to shoot RAW. Doing a whitebalance BEFORE shooting often does not work. eg. On sunday I will be shooting a thearical rehearsal for about 3 hrs. I will probably shooy 600 - 800 images. Mostly with 'nanosecond' timing. Shooting a WhiteBalance is just not practical (or necessary) in the time. RAW gives infinitely more processing power than jpeg, and that power is often useful.

 

I do not wish to detract from your joy and pleasure with the Whitbal, as it clearly works for you, and others. That is the point, we must all find our own workflow. I would love for it to be so simple for me, but as a "troubleshooter", I typically get jobs that others cannot do, useually for technical reasons such as colur balance under some conditions. So Go enjoy, as do I.

[Peter L]

Jerry , I have the expodisc , I used it with a dslr, when you say " setting the speed" , are you referring to the color temperature in degrees Kelvin ? or do you mean the shutterspeed associated with the set aperture ?

Thanks

Peter

[Cindy Flood]

Jerry,

I have an expodisc and it is a very nice addition to a photographic kit. I certainly would not give up shooting RAW just because I use the expodisc. It works perfectly if I am shooting in one spot and the lighting doesn't change. If the lighting is changing, I keep re-shooting the expodisc (and it is still not perfect in every shot).

Shoot RAW and you can tweak it in post (with the expodisc giving you a good start.)

[Skippy Sanchez]

Who needs shooting RAW, if you can get the perfect WB.

 

Jerry

 

There are many reasons to shoot RAW besides white balance control:

*No in-camera processing -- everything recorded on the CCD is there, giving one complete control over the finished photograph. You are the lab, not the camera.

*Noise reduction capabilities better than Photoshop.

*Exposure, contrast, highlight clipping and shadow detail control superior to Photoshop.

*Highlight detail is much easier to salvage in RAW than in JPG.

*Metadata applications.

*Superior b/w conversion options.

*Uncompressed files.

*Lens (vignetting) correction.

*High-bit advantage.

*Batch processing.

*Camera raw edits are linear conversions and thereby less destructive than gamma-editing a JPG file, saving -- rather than destroying -- much more of the origional data. The more data, the more detail.

 

The main downside: it takes time and work.

 

By setting the camera to shoot both JPG and DNG, you have the best of both worlds, but I suspect once a person develops an efficient workflow, he'll always opt for working with RAW files.

 

Just my thoughts-

-Skippy

[jsjxyz]

Jerry , I have the expodisc , I used it with a dslr, when you say " setting the speed" , are you referring to the color temperature in degrees Kelvin ? or do you mean the shutterspeed associated with the set aperture ?

Thanks

Peter

If you watch the DVD that comes with the filter, if you poiting to the source of lights, set the white balance, the exposure also will get the right one, since the filter also funtioning as gray card also.

 

Jerry

[jsjxyz]

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There are many reasons to shoot RAW besides white balance control:

*No in-camera processing -- everything recorded on the CCD is there, giving one complete control over the finished photograph. You are the lab, not the camera.

*Noise reduction capabilities better than Photoshop.

*Exposure, contrast, highlight clipping and shadow detail control superior to Photoshop.

*Highlight detail is much easier to salvage in RAW than in JPG.

*Metadata applications.

*Superior b/w conversion options.

*Uncompressed files.

*Lens (vignetting) correction.

*High-bit advantage.

*Batch processing.

*Camera raw edits are linear conversions and thereby less destructive than gamma-editing a JPG file, saving -- rather than destroying -- much more of the origional data. The more data, the more detail.

 

The main downside: it takes time and work.

 

By setting the camera to shoot both JPG and DNG, you have the best of both worlds, but I suspect once a person develops an efficient workflow, he'll always opt for working with RAW files.

 

Just my thoughts-

-Skippy

You right there are more advantages of shooting RAW except the time. Also in theater setting I believe RAW is still the best since the lightning keep changing all the time

 

Jerry

[charlesphoto99]

I always think of the RAW fle as my negative and the jpeg as my work print (to show to the client right away for example). Would you really have wanted to compromise your negative in the past?

 

Anyway, memory is so cheap relatively there's no reason to shoot anything but RAW or RAW plus jpeg.

[Baxter]

I too was persuaded to buy an expodisc. It works really well with RAW files as well as jpeg. I am developing using Lightroom and simply set the White balance setting to 'As Shot'. The temperatures vary emormously when I look at the figures throughout the day, just as you would expect.

 

If I then want to amend I can do, but in most cases the colour is accurate, just as advertised. I tend not to use for exposure at the moment, leaving on Auto.