Gray Card...Sort Of

I'm working this week-end so I didn't get home until 6:00 P.M. Fortunately, there's plenty of daylight left at the end of the day. K and I as I mentioned before are taking a photography class together. Since this is the first day since our first class with direct sunlight, we needed to get our first exercise done which involved meter readings and exposures based on 18% gray card vs. the meter reading of the subject decided by the camera with multiple higher and lower exposures bracketed. Sounds boring but it helps gain familiarity with the metering system of our cameras and to get a sense of the lattitude (or lack thereof) of digital camera.

As you can see, this "gray" card is not fully gray. I bought it a while back for the purposes of trying to understand and learn how to match colors and correct for white balance. Supposedly, color imbalance is easier to detect with subtle color shifts as on this card rather than with brilliant colors as on K's shirt. Regardless, this card is supposed to average 18% gray reflectivity which is the "standard". It remains to be seen if our photography instructor has a problem with a colored gray card, because he hasn't seen it yet. I'll let you know.

Has anyone seen those lovely fingers before? Look here. She's my hand model for the Break-Up blip.