Douglas 18% Grey Card White Balance Exposure 18% Gray

The Douglas Mark II 18% Grey Card provides better, more consistent colour balancing of digital and conventional photography across the widest range of illumination, including tungsten, daylight, flash and warm fluorescent tubes. The Mark II is also more compact.

Grey on one side and white on the other, the Douglas Grey Card is suitable for a wide range of purposes including exposure measurement, contrast measurement, colour balancing and setting white balance.

The Douglas Mark II folds easily to about A5 size and fits snugly into a camera bag. Once fully opened, it is large enough to fill a 35mm camera viewfinder at 40 cm with a 50mm lens.

Features:

• No artificial brighteners - which will distort exposure.
• Advanced, tough synthetic material - for years of use
• Stain-free - unlike traditional card, the Douglas can be written on
  with a Chinagraph pencil or suitable markers, then cleaned with mild
  detergent or spray cleaner
• Reflects the same proportion of all colours of light falling
  including ultra-violet and the limit of visible red

What is a grey card?

Camera light meters see reflected light, but it is often useful to know the incident light (the light hitting your subject). With an 18 percent grey card you can get a reflected light reading which is essentially the same as reading incident light.

Why do we use a grey card?

Here are several situations that benefit greatly by the use of a grey card to check the exposure.

• Whenever there is any sort of back lighting such as a bright sky or window behind the
• subject. When there is a light source such as bulb or light fixture in front of your camera.
• When there is any type of back light such as a bright sky or window behind the subject.
• When a large part of the scene has a fairly dark tone like a close up of a big black car.
• When a large part of the scene has a fairly light tone like a snow scene.

Using the Grey card

To use the Grey Card as the basis for an in-camera custom white balance, make sure enough of the center of the frame is covered by the card in your picture to be properly read for white balance. Fill the frame with the card. Next, go through the menu to select that picture for your custom white balance. Finally, set the camera to the custom white balance setting.