I was really excited to receive the Datacolor SpyderCube for my birthday from my wife and was anxious to try it out.  This evening was my first chance to try it as I was taking a couple of pictures of my parents.

Perhaps I should give a general explanation as to what the SpyderCube is:  The SpyderCube is an accurate fast tool for helping set the white balance of a photograph.  Datacolor presents it as a RAW calibration tool, (and that is where it is most effective) but I would venture out on a limb and guess that you could possibly use it to help with a JPG image as well.  

How do you use it?  

The basic principle of using the SpyderCube would be to use it in one or two test frames at the beginning of  a series of photos.  If you’ve used a grey card before, this would replace your grey card.  Proceed with your shoot, reshooting the SpyderCube when you move your subject or the light changes.  The little reflective ball on the top of the cube can be helpful for balancing flash, so I would recommend taking a shot with flash and also without at the beginning of the shoot.  As an added bonus, it can be mounted on a standard 1/4 inch threaded mount, so it can be placed in the scene on a tripod.  I used a Joby Gorilla Pod and asked the subjects to hold it upright in the frame.  This seemed to work better than them holding onto the SpyderCube directly.

Did it work?

In a word… Yes!  It worked really well actually, and I was surprised at how accurate just performing the general white balance fix was in Lightroom.

Is this a novelty item, or will you actually use it?

No, this isn’t just a novelty item.  You can go read the specs, description and various uses on it’s website.  Let’s just say that this is tougher than a 18% grey card and will be accurate for years to come.  After seeing the initial shots, I fully intend to use it whenever I can.

Do you see it helping with your workflow? 

Yes actually I do see it helping speed up my workflow.  After determining the white balance, brightness and a couple of other factors in the test picture; it was just a matter of creating a preset and then applying it to the other proofs in the set.  Where this will come in really handy will be in processing bridal party shots where the bride is stationary and other members move in and out of the shot. 

Couldn’t you already do this with a grey card?

You could only do part of the process with a grey card.  The SpyderCube also allows you to properly adjust for highs, lows and pure black, meaning that it allows you to adjust these types of settings faster and more efficiently and consistently.

Conclusion

In the end, I am very thankful to have received the SpyderCube for my birthday.  I’m excited to start using it in different situations to see how it fixes colour cast.  In the end, the photos that I was working on, looked like the light that I remembered that was present when I took the shots and that is what matters.

Update on Monday, September 21, 2009 at 10:43PM by Jared

Thanks to Charlotte’s suggestion, I took some time to resize one of the pictures that I was working with to show an example of the difference the SpyderCube can make.  Please note that there hasn’t been any other colour correction to these examples other than using the SpyderCube as a reference for the white balance.  What do you think?  

 OriginalSpyderCube Adjustment 

Today the rest of my order arrived!  I have the best wife, she emailed me as soon as it got to the house and then offered to get the battery charging, but she didn’t unwrap the camera!  How sweet is that!?!

We went out for a little bit this evening to take some test pictures, and wandered around the Alberta Legislature for a bit.  Here are a couple of the pictures that I took, with only some very minimal editing done to them.  More on my opinion of the camera to come in the near future.  Enjoy!

So after several months of consideration, I have decided to upgrade my camera body from a Canon Digital Rebel XTi to a Canon 50D.  As part of my order I also ordered a battery grip and an extra battery.  Of course that’s what has shown up first and hopefully the camera will be arriving tomorrow.  This purchase is a first for me on a couple of different levels, it is the first equipment that I have purchased from B&H Photo Video, and it is also the first “factory refurbished” product that I’ve had.  That made it a bit lighter on the pocket book and I hope that it is alright.  Have any of you purchased a factory refurbished piece of camera gear before?  If so please leave a comment.

So what made me finally get off the fence and upgrade my main camera body after humming and hawing for so long?  Was it the micro lense adjustment?  Was it a bad case of gear lust?  Did my existing camera break?  Actually the answer to all of these questions is “No.”  The thing that convinced me was walking past a display about a month ago and picked one up and held it for about five minutes.  It just felt right, balanced and made me want to go out and shoot for hours.  Is this a good thing?  Yes!  My most commonly used lens is the EF 24-105 f/4 L, and the weight of the lens paired with the XTi doesn’t feel that great after several hours of continuous shooting.  Having a battery grip for the XTi has definitely helped, but after holding the 50D the difference in ergonomics was massive. 

In the coming weeks, I will be posting more about my experiences with the 50D.  In the meantime head over to check out the new picture in Portraits —> Objects & Things.  Enjoy!