Have you heard of using paint chip cards for white balance cards?

I read some time ago that you can use the paint chip cards from Home Depot as a white balance card.  I was just in Home Depot last night and there were so many.  Anyone know specifically which one works the best? 

Grey cards are pretty cheap, this is one DIY I wouldn't mess with

Patty Ganahl wrote: I read some time ago that you can use the paint chip cards from Home Depot as a white balance card.  I was just in Home Depot last night and there were so many.  Anyone know specifically which one works the best? 

I'll go with, "I think you were misinformed." That really makes no sense whatsoever.

Gray cards are not expensive. Buy a WhiBal card for $20 and know what you've got.

Exactly, why fuss around with DIY cards like this, the extra time needed to make this work, makes this a un-economical move quickly.  

Never heard this before, plausible yes, but I think you would spend more time getting it set up correctly than it's worth. 

You weren't misinformed. Back in the early days of digital people would use paint chip cards to fool white balance but not for setting the correct white balance although some did with gray chips. Here is how they were generally used. You carried two colors. A light blue and a light orange. Set the white balance on the blue chip and you got a nice warm toned image because you fooled the white balance. Set it on the orange chip and you got a nice cool toned image. This is the way we tricked the camera back when there weren't as many adjustments. That is most likely the scenario the person was talking about. I haven't needed that trick in years and it would still work but shooting raw and all the presets available now eliminates the need for this.

Excellent; I have learned something today. I can't imagine deciding what a good shade of blue or orange might be, but this all makes sense. Glad we have post tools to deal with all of that now.

Shadowfixer1 wrote: You weren't misinformed. Back in the early days of digital people would use paint chip cards to fool white balance but not for setting the correct white balance although some did with gray chips. Here is how they were generally used. You carried two colors. A light blue and a light orange. Set the white balance on the blue chip and you got a nice warm toned image because you fooled the white balance. Set it on the orange chip and you got a nice cool toned image. This is the way we tricked the camera back when there weren't as many adjustments. That is most likely the scenario the person was talking about. I haven't needed that trick in years and it would still work but shooting raw and all the presets available now eliminates the need for this.

+1  on the interesting fun fact.  Thanks for sharing this.  

Interesting, thats a good one to know.  I don't think I'd go down this path these days, to many options.  

Shadowfixer1 wrote: You weren't misinformed. Back in the early days of digital people would use paint chip cards to fool white balance but not for setting the correct white balance although some did with gray chips. Here is how they were generally used. You carried two colors. A light blue and a light orange. Set the white balance on the blue chip and you got a nice warm toned image because you fooled the white balance. Set it on the orange chip and you got a nice cool toned image. This is the way we tricked the camera back when there weren't as many adjustments. That is most likely the scenario the person was talking about. I haven't needed that trick in years and it would still work but shooting raw and all the presets available now eliminates the need for this.

Overread wrote:

Shadowfixer1 wrote: You weren't misinformed. Back in the early days of digital people would use paint chip cards to fool white balance but not for setting the correct white balance although some did with gray chips. Here is how they were generally used. You carried two colors. A light blue and a light orange. Set the white balance on the blue chip and you got a nice warm toned image because you fooled the white balance. Set it on the orange chip and you got a nice cool toned image. This is the way we tricked the camera back when there weren't as many adjustments. That is most likely the scenario the person was talking about. I haven't needed that trick in years and it would still work but shooting raw and all the presets available now eliminates the need for this.

Your post brought back memories of forum posts when people would talk about doing that. I was still shooting film then, and thought it seemed like a lot of bother.
Well another way to set WB without using a formal gray card, exposure tool, is the top from a Pringles can, or a cutout piece from the clear/opaque milk cartons. Those do work surprisingly well. I mean if you are going to go ghetto then those are the ghettoest.