Travel & Humanitarian Photos
X-Rite are probably the go-to boys and girls when it comes to looking for tools to help you produce a reliable and consistent colour workflow. I’ve been using their monitor calibration tools for several years so my ears pricked up when I learned that they’d announced the arrival of a pocket-sized colour calibration tool.
The X-Rite web site gives a comprehensive description of the product and includes videos and tutorials so there’s no point in me duplicating the information that you’ll find there. Instead, here’s my full and unbiased review of the product and its integration with Adobe Lightroom after extensive field-tests.
It works!
Seriously, what else do you want to know? OK, you’ve paid your entrance fee, here’s a little more information in the form of ever-popular bullet-points:
In practice, it’s simple to use and I love the fact that it slips easily into the side pocket of my camera bag. Slide it out, flip it open and either hand-hold it, ask your model to hold it or fold it out fully to reveal all three “pages” and it will support itself and stand up.
It makes the process of getting accurate colour and white-balance in post-production so simple that I’m wondering what I used to do before. Mostly, I’d guess. And whilst that’s served me well enough until now, it’s reassuring to know that my orange chillies will render accurately in future.
So, there are plenty of “pros”, what about the “cons”? Well, the nice man in the shop where I bought it handled it so gingerly that I feared it might explode as he demonstrated it to me in the Bangkok Camera Emporium that I’m known to frequent. When I asked why he was being so wary, he explained that is was important not to get finger-prints on the colour panels as this might adversely affect their accuracy. Also, the panels will fade in time and X-Rite say that the life-span of a ColorChecker is about two years.
B&H are listing the ColorChecker Passport at $98.99, which doesn’t seem an unreasonable investment for two years colour fidelity but you could also take a look at X-Rite’s ColorChecker card at $59.69 if you’re on a tight budget but you wouldn’t get the nice case, grey-card and Lightroom plug-in.
If you’d like to see how it links up with the Lightroom plug-in then the following video might be of interest although please consider that I recorded it in one take at some ungodly hour on Sunday morning, foolishly before I’d taken my first cup of tea.
In conclusion, I really do think the X-Rite ColorChecker Passport, despite the misspelling of “colour”, is a nifty little tool that does what all the best tools do, it solves a problem simply and efficiently. I fully expect to see ColorChecker Passports appearing in my colleagues’ camera bags in the very near future.
Very nice video/review, you have a pleasant speaking voice and the video was very well done. I just ordered this a couple of days ago and I’m looking forward to using it.
Regards,
Richard Selby
The only problem I have with these cards is remembering to take them with me….somehow they always end up in the wrong bag. The large one was fine when I always used my photo-rucksack as it fitted into the laptop bit but no other bag. I accept that is my problem and not X-Rites’s!
However, because of my memoery I ended up with the credit card sized ones as I can keep them in my wallet.
Great video and great info…I’m sold.
Gavin, where do you get these in Thailand, or is it mail order from overseas? Prices in BKK seem to be somewhat in excess of the advertised US ones (strangely is often the case in HK too for niche electrical photo things).