Travel
- Bellroy #giveaway The Perfect Passport Sleeve
This week we are giving you the chance to win the perfect passport sleeve worth around $100. Most people don't even use passport sleeves. They just put their passport in the pocket and that's it. I would tell them that they have to use one, to...
- Improve Your Photography With This Monitor Calibrator #giveaway From X-rite
This week we are giving you the chance to win one of the best tools for professional photographers worth around $250. If you’re not using some sort of monitor profiling system, chances are you aren’t really seeing your photos as you should. You've...
- Better Sound With Custom One Pro Headphones
When traveling you might not be able to take with you the Hi-Fi audio system from home, but you can definitely use some high quality headphones. Keeping this in mind I decided to take the Beyerdynamic Custom One Pro Headphones out for a spin. The...
- The Essential Checklist For European Travel. Stay Safe Abroad
You might think that staying safe abroad is a doddle. Most people do. After all, what could possibly go wrong on holiday? It’s a time for relaxing and enjoying yourself, not worrying about the unexpected. Right? Unfortunately, as travel insurers, we...
- New Passport Fees - Effective July 13
Link: New Passport Fees - Effective July 13 U.S. citizens will be paying more for passport fees starting July 13. New, adult passport will jump 35% New minors under 16, passport will increase 25% Existing passport fee Adult fees increase almost...
Travel
How to Improve Your Photography Using a Colorchecker
We always look for new ways to improve our photography, and though we came a long way, sometimes the secret is in the details. Up till now we were missing a simple but very important device in our field photography kit - a color checker. So when the guys from X-Rite agreed to partner with us and let us review their standard 24 chip Colorchecker, we were thrilled.
The Colorchecker comes in a hard plastic case, suitable for location use, along with a "Creative Enhancement Target" for color balance refinement, and a standard white balance card. For a photojournalist, it has a perfect small size. In addition it comes with Windows and Mac software for creating Adobe DNG profiles as well as a Plug-in for Lightroom.
How to use the X-Rite Colorchecker
With the X-Rite Colorchecker Passport it is easily to record a white balance target on location. The physical design of the Colorchecker Passport is good and the model can hold it in his/her hand or you can put it on the ground. The plastic case is rugged and hinged so that it can be self standing with any of the faces visible. I find it cool that it also has a lanyard for securing it around your neck or to a camera bag.
I recommend to shoot the standard Colorchecker as large in the frame as possible. Try to expose properly so that there are no blinkies on your playback screen and therefore no clipping on the whites. Even if the shot is not in focus it's still OK. Now take your soon to be amazing photos.
In front of the computer
Finally, it's time to process the photos. To use the stand-alone Passport software, export the shot of the Colorchecker out of either Camera Raw or Lightroom to a DNG file. Drag it into the X-Rite Colorchecker Passport software. Click Create Profile, name it, and a few second later the job is done, with a custom profile having been created and put into the correct directory by the program.
A neat trick is to create a Custom Preset in Lightroom or Camera Raw that contains both the calibration and the White Balance that you've set. You'll now be able to apply this to any image shot with that camera under those light conditions, even selecting a hundred or a thousand images at once and profiling and white balancing them all with a single click.
Last thoughts
From now on I plan to snap ColorChecker shots for most scenes. This way I can create a profile whenever I see the need for it. And if you take your photography seriously, the X-Rrite Colorchecker Passport is a must-have. Because... when it comes to amazing photos, every little helps.
Quick tip: Check also my review on the X-Rite ColorMuki Display, as it can often be found in a bundle with the ColorChecker Passport.
About the Author: Cipri is the co-founder of Travelocafe and a tech nerd. He loves photographing people and details. He's set foot in 30 countries so far, but if you ask him, Japan is his favorite.
About the Author: Cipri is the co-founder of Travelocafe and a tech nerd. He loves photographing people and details. He's set foot in 30 countries so far, but if you ask him, Japan is his favorite.
- Bellroy #giveaway The Perfect Passport Sleeve
This week we are giving you the chance to win the perfect passport sleeve worth around $100. Most people don't even use passport sleeves. They just put their passport in the pocket and that's it. I would tell them that they have to use one, to...
- Improve Your Photography With This Monitor Calibrator #giveaway From X-rite
This week we are giving you the chance to win one of the best tools for professional photographers worth around $250. If you’re not using some sort of monitor profiling system, chances are you aren’t really seeing your photos as you should. You've...
- Better Sound With Custom One Pro Headphones
When traveling you might not be able to take with you the Hi-Fi audio system from home, but you can definitely use some high quality headphones. Keeping this in mind I decided to take the Beyerdynamic Custom One Pro Headphones out for a spin. The...
- The Essential Checklist For European Travel. Stay Safe Abroad
You might think that staying safe abroad is a doddle. Most people do. After all, what could possibly go wrong on holiday? It’s a time for relaxing and enjoying yourself, not worrying about the unexpected. Right? Unfortunately, as travel insurers, we...
- New Passport Fees - Effective July 13
Link: New Passport Fees - Effective July 13 U.S. citizens will be paying more for passport fees starting July 13. New, adult passport will jump 35% New minors under 16, passport will increase 25% Existing passport fee Adult fees increase almost...