I’m not going to lie. One of the biggest challenges for me as a photographer was getting my white balance right.  Even in a studio where the light was pretty constant, I struggled as it was coming from all different directions and changing constantly as it was natural.  I have a tendency to shoot really warm (orange) with my newborns and was always frustrated that what showed on my camera screen didn’t translate onto my computer screen.  Thankfully for editing software its a pretty easy fix but being that there are never enough hours in my day, getting it right in camera was a better alternative.

Gasp……below are two straight out of camera shots from the past few months when I was shooting in Kelvin for white balance. I was all over the place.

I had heard about this little disc thing that helped with setting your custom white balance.  I’d seen a number of photographers using it such as fellow Showiteers Jach and Jody and Amy and Jordan but I am not a huge gear person and have a very minimal bag of lenses that I use.  I figured it was just another thing to lug around in my bag.   I finally got a push to try it when another lovely newborn photographer friend of mine swore it changed her shooting.  So I ordered the Expodisc 2.0 from Amazon for roughly $50 and figured I would give it a try.  In the photography gear world that is not much of an investment.

 

I watched a few tutorial videos on Youtube as watching videos is more of my learning style than reading a manual and put it to use right away.  It really is so so simple!  The consistency of my shots coming out of camera has improved drastically.

 

1. Flip the lens to manual focus.

2. hold it up covering the lens in the position of your subject- point it where you are going to stand to shoot.

3. take a shot.

4. set your camera’s custom white balance to that shot

4.  Flip your camera back to auto focus.  This was the step I kept forgetting and then was wondering why my camera wasn’t focusing 🙂

 

Below is a shot straight out of camera using my Expodisc.  Not a single edit on this baby as you can tell by the skin.