Gary Fong ColorPerfectDome - Half Spherical 18% Grey Color Balance Tool

I work as a commercial product photographer, always using several light sources in my work. Flat cards were okay but were not a good representation of my total White Balance. This DOME allows all those sources to be counted.Good job Gary Fong, it just makes sense

It works for the purpose I purchased it for, to do some color correction. 🙂

I'm a semi-professional photographer, and to me, the two trickiest accessories in photography are polarizers and color balancing tools. I find I can never rely on either... sometimes the outcome is wonderful, other times it's worse.So it is with this. I have no doubt that the product performs exactly as described. Gary Fong is a respected name in photo accessories. Just, don't expect it to work miracles, and make sure you don't depend on it to always give the most pleasing result. Using a color balancer in conjunction with the custom white balance settings on your DSLR camera is basically an attempt to shift the overall color tone of the image back to what it would look like in "standard" daylight. If that's what you want, great - but sometimes things shot in shadows or on cloudy days don't look right in standard daylight tone, or the custom balance tends to overcompensate and make the image too "warm". And other times, it's a marked improvement. I find it's most important for photos of people - when you want to get the skin tones right - for landscape photography, you'll just have to experiment with what looks better.Sadly, I don't know why Amazon has turned off the ability to attach photos to a review of a photography product. I had 6 images to show you: one of an overall "warm" subject, one with an overall "cool" subject, and one taken inside a thick grove of baby pine trees - all taken on an overcast day with, and without the color balance applied.In my opinion, the warm subject was slightly overcompensated and made too orange for my taste... by just about the same amount that the camera-balanced photo appeared slightly too cool. Perfect would be somewhere right in the middle. Same with the overall cool shot of a swimming pool surrounded by a gray rock wall and plants - without, it was slightly too cool, with, it was slightly too warm. In neither of these cases would I say one was any better than the other.The shady, and very green, forest was a different matter. WIthout the color balancing, the forest was very blue-green with very little contrast. WITH the color balance, it was made SIGNIFICANTLY warmer, but in a pleasing way - the greens were now green and had a lot more contrast. Now, to be fair, what the camera showed was probably closer to what the human eye actually sees, but the balanced photo was a lot more pleasing.Therefore, I'm going to claim that this dome, along with a proper camera that does custom white balance, does exactly what it's supposed to do, but only with experience can you decide if what it does is right for the situation. In my limited testing, I've not seen it have any different results than what I get from my gray cards, but the explanation of the domed benefits makes a lot of sense, especially if taking closer-up photos of 3D objects (ie: people) so I'd take that into consideration.Buy one. Experiment. Have fun. Happy shooting!

If you've been shooting for any length of time you know the value of a gray card. Heck, I have color matched gray paint I use to make my own so if they get lost or damaged it's no biggie. Now there's this - a gray dome. Gary Fong makes some cool photo products and his ideas are probably ripped off more than anyone else's.Every gray card I own is matte and non reflective, so the light and color are uniform, even at an angle. With this dome there are lots of dark spots and highlights - it's semi-gloss, not matte. You need to know which spot is actually neutral, or sample the entire thing and let your camera or software average it out.I found that it takes some practice to get an accurate gray. In a studio setting or an area with a lot of light sources, the dome has more highlights than gray. It's not as simple to use as a gray card. I've watched several videos put out by Fong on this dome. In some he says to sample the entire dome and let your camera handle it. In others to use software and you need to decide on witch is the best spot to click. Despite it's shape, it is NOT designed to snap on his flash accessories.Unlike gray cards, it's a lot bulkier. If you're already carrying the Fong modifiers/diffusers this adds very little space. So is this right for you? Try it and see. I think it makes more sense for cameras that allow custom white balance in-camera, color sample and average the area for you. Select the entire dome and go. If YOU need to pick a small spot on the dome later on I think many people will be at a loss since you need to guess on the best spot to click.

The 18% gray card has been a useful tool for photographers for many years. Back in the days of film, it was a necessity if you were a studio photographer trying to account for the color shifts caused by artificial lighting. Digital cameras do a better job of balancing light, but of course they are not perfect. Many photographers rely on photo editing programs to make the images look right. Even with these, you need a neutral reference point, so the gray card is still around. Photographer Gary Fong realized that most surfaces are not flat, and light may be coming from more than one direction. Thus he came up with the 18% gray dome. It is a small gray plastic bowl. The value is that it is the right tone of gray for color balancing tools. And it is small, less awkward to carry than most gray cards. Mine did not come with instructions. I went to Gary Fong’s website and learned that this is basically used the same way as a gray card, but it has the advantage of being multi directional. In my photo, I have natural light coming from one direction and incandescent light coming from the other direction. A flat card would not have shown this.I was already familiar with Gary Fong as a photographer and online teacher who sells accessories. I like that this is made in USA. It comes in a recyclable cardboard box.