GretagMacbeth colorchecker or Whibal Kit

I'm getting into raw and color management. Should I get the Macbeth

colorchecker or Whibal kit? which one is better? I think i'm mainly just using

the middle gray to set tone. Thanks

To be honest, the only time i had use the gretag Macbeth is when i had to shoot product and

color acurancy was realy important to a paranoiac point. For beauty, portrait or fashion, i

dont and dont know any professional photographer around me that use one of those thing. If

you want one, i think the cheapest one will do the job, if you just need the gray part of it.

<p><i>the only time i had use the gretag Macbeth is when i had to shoot product and color acurancy was realy important to a paranoiac point.</i></p>

<p>In which case SG would be preferable.</p>

Ordinary white balance techniques adjust the red/blue balance based on measurements at a single point in the spectrum. This works reasonably well for light that approximates a black body radiator, including ordinary incandescent light. In mathmatical terms, you are reproducing a curve based on one point. That's OK if you know the characteristics of the curve - the end points are given.

Among the things that violate the black body assumption are light sources filtered by the environment (walls, green leaves, etc), or that are inherently not black body radiators, such as fluorescent lights, and gaseous discharge lamps (mercury and sodium vapor). If the color isn't there (e.g., high pressure sodium lamps), profiling won't restore it. (My solution is to shoot black and white).

A Color Checker chart gives you many points with different colors and intensities - the more the better. A simple, 16-patch chart is OK for starters, but a Color Checker SG (or larger) chart results in a much smoother profile, for a wide range of color and luminosity.

You need software to complete the trick, and a CMS-compliant work flow. I use a Photoshop plug-in, "InCamera" by Pictocolor, which is reasonably effective and priced, and works with a wide variety of color standard charts. It can be used for digital capture, reversal film and negative film (with limitations).