Delta 1 18% Gray Card (2 Pack)

Twelve dollars for two flimsy pieces of cardboard is outrageously expensive. Adorama/Delta would still make a handsome profit if they sold twelve cards for the same price. If you use your gray card frequently, as I do, it won't last long, especially if it gets wet. If you get a smudge on it, you won't be able to clean it without damaging the surface.

For the price they should be plastic or vinyl, or something more durable than cardboard. They do what they are supposed to do, but with regular use, they will likely need to be replaced every once in a while.

Good gray cards. Same as expensive ones. However if i had to do it over again i would have purchased a gray card that is designed to be folded for storing.

Bought but never used them - they look classic

Good

Gray paper is bubbled and peeling from a thin cardboard backing - Almost like it was wet at one time or stored in damp area. Better choices elsewhere

I keep a ColorChecker Passport in my main camera bag for color correction and occasionally spot metering. It is expensive and I have three different camera kits that I use. I don't want to shuffle the Passport around for fear that when I grab my "main" camera bag, it will be somewhere else. So, instead of full color correction, I settle for a good white balance for the other two cameras. A friend gave one of these to me and before putting it into use I checked it against the ColorChecker. Using my Sekonic L 858's spot meter, the exposures between the Delta Gray card were almost identical with a 1/10 stop difference between them. While people yap about using a white card or a gray card for setting White Balance, if the cards are color neutral, it doesn't matter. When balanced, my ColorChecker reads R/G/B as 136/135/135. The Delta card reads: 135/131/132. But, there is a caveat if you're using the card at arms length. Your white balance shot will show the uneven texture in the cardboard base which to a single point eyedropper will have different densities. I changed my eyedropper to a 101 pixel sampler, and then applied a 30 pixel gaussian blur to it to arrive at the above numbers. So, this goes into the bag that I only use for non-critical work. For that, this is close enough...perhaps.

I just measured the reflectance of my copy of this card with a calibrated densitometer (X-rite model 810). The three color channels (ANSI status A) are well balanced on my card, to within 0.01 units. However, reflectance of my sample is 15%, not the specified 18%, i.e. it is 0.82 units in the VIS channel of the densitometer. Because of this inaccuracy I am giving this product a rating of 3.However, the whole topic of 18% gray cards is fraught with unexpected difficulties and misunderstandings, which raises the question of whether cards from other vendors may also be inaccurate with respect to their specified reflectances. If so then they would also deserve low review ratings.