Improve White Balance with Expodisc

Thanks to a friendly camera salesman, I was introduced to the Expodisc (or as the company prefers, expodisc), a digital white balance tool that improves the white balance output of your photographs. The disc bears a striking resemblance to a filter, except it is white on both sides. One side of the filter has a distinctive quilted pattern, while the other is a flat white surface.

The way the expodisc works is it turns your camera into an incident light meter. Instead of taking a reflective reading – that is, the camera reads the light that bounces back onto your camera’s sensor – the expodisc helps you take a reading from the light source, which results in much truer colour output in your photographs.

Most modern cameras come with an automatic white balance setting. Until recently, most auto white balance settings completely misread the light, although cameras such as the Nikon D300 are getting better at this with every new model. Sometimes the results are predictable, especially if you’re shooting outside on bright, sunny day. Where a tool like the expodisc shines is when you’re in a mixed light setting, such as indoors, or outdoors where there are multiple light sources.

I took the following photo with my D300. Try to ignore the messy bookshelves. The top photograph was composed with the D300′s auto white balance setting. In the second shot, I took a reading by going over to the lamp, pointing my camera at the source of the light with the expodisc in front of my lens, and setting a custom white balance. The results speak for themselves. These photos are straight out of the camera, and were only processed for file size and to sharpen the photos slightly.

White balance results with and without the expodisc

When using the D300′s auto white balance setting, especially indoors under fluorescent light, you can count on the photos coming out a bit warm (as a matter of fact, I find this to be true of every Nikon DSLR I’ve ever had). Our walls are a seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time combination of off-white with a slight hint of green, and a dark gray that has a slightly olive undertone. Shut up. The expodisc photo is the closest representation of how the color actually looks under normal light. The results were so stunning in fact, that I had to look at the photo a couple of times and remember what this room looks like during the day.

The expodisc comes in a wide range of sizes, and prices (in Canada) range from $95-140. If you shoot under controlled lighting situations such as a studio, or in places where the light doesn’t change too much (say, during an outdoor portrait session), I’d recommend buying an expodisc. The discs range in size, so if you’re thinking of buying one, I’d recommend getting one that is slightly larger than the lenses you use most. The lenses I use most often range between 52-62mm, but I took this shot with a Nikon 18-200mm VR lens with a 72mm lens opening, and I’m still pleased with the results.