ACE Camera Photography Magazine, Fotowand Color Gray Cards and 18% Gray Cards


Gray cards are an indispensible part of a serious photographer's toolkit. Unfortunately they don't last long. In nearly 40 years of photography, I've gone through more gray cards than I care to remember. All the ones I've ever used have been printed on cardboard. With normal use and handling, a gray card soon becomes soiled and fingerprinted, dog-eared and bent.


A better solution Recently I discovered Fotowand Technic in Sudwalde, Germany. Fotowand makes highly durable gray cards, color reference cards and many other quality light measuring tools for photographers, photo lab technicians and graphic designers.			If you don't know about the many uses for gray cards, find out now with our gray card tutorial.

I've been using Fotowand's color gray card and traditional gray card for the last several months and I'm impressed.

Washable, flexible and fade-resistant
Fotowand's color gray card and other reference products are printed on white polystyrene. This means you can wash off fingerprints and soil with a little liquid hand soap and water or a plastic cleaning agent. Try doing this with a cardboard gray card and you'll have a soggy mess.

Fotowand's distinctive patented design features a white border around the neutral 18% gray field. I like the white trim because it keeps oily fingers from touching the gray target. If the protective white edge bothers you, it can be trimmed off with a utility knife and a straight edge.

The polystyrene plastic is much stronger and more flexible than cardboard and the color stability is highly fade resistant. I have no reservation with the manufacturer's claim that "the card is intended to last a photographer's lifetime." The guidelines for long life are simple - never use solvents or detergents to clean the card, avoid scratches, and store the card in the clear plastic envelope out of sunlight and other bright light when not in use.

The color gray circles serve an important function. When shooting a test frame, it allows the photographer to instantly compare the color balance of one film over another. Sometimes professional photographers need a perfect color match between the subject they've photographed and the color print. A custom photo lab can easily see color bias in the test frame and make whatever color correction is needed.

Color shifts are easy to see
Photographers have used another tool for years to determine color fidelity - the Macbeth Color Checker, a cardboard color reference card with 18 saturated color samples and a 6 step gray scale. While the Macbeth chart is useful to determine how a particular film renders a specific color, the Fotowand color gray card has a decided advantage when it comes to detecting color balance and color casts against the neutral gray background. It's much more difficult to detect subtle color shifts in the intense color squares on the Macbeth chart.

When my test roll of film came back from the minilab, I could instantly see from the reference photo of Fotowand's color gray card that the entire roll was going to have a magenta cast.

Exposure Adjustments Not Needed
Fotowand's color gray card and gray card have an additional advantage over cardboard gray cards. They don't require making any exposure adjustments when photographing a subject with sidelighting because the surface is dead matte and has a micro prismatic surface-structure. Light coming from angles up to 45 degrees is reflected everywhere at the same intensity.


Monochrome Photography Black and white purists will be glad to know Fotowand also manufactures traditional 18% gray cards using the same washable, flexible polystyrene material, and the choice of a white or black border. Both the color gray card and traditional gray card are available in two sizes, standard 8-1/4" x 11-5/8" half-size 8-1/4" x 5-4/5"		Traditional 18% Gray Card is available on both white and black stock

Pricing and Ordering
Color gray card:
standard size EURO 30.41, half-size EURO 23.80
Traditional gray card:
standard size EURO 11.90, half-size EURO 8.37
Shipping and Handling, add EURO 10

Fotowand accepts international money orders and dollar notes, however they don't accept credit card orders at present.

Fotowand Site Navigation Tips
The Fotowand site is in German and English. Two browser windows will open, Shop-Etage (Shop Floor - in German) and Site-Etage (Site Floor- In German and English). Pressing the Alt+Tab keys allow you to switch between windows. Substantial product information is on the Site-Etage pages. The lower left hand frame on the Site-Etage window has small national flags. The British flag produces the English version. Other flags produce Fotowand distributors in Austria, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, and the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

At present there are no local distributors in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, Australia or Asia.

Fotowand Technic Products
Other Fotowand products include color reference cards, graystep cards, skintone color bias cards, scanner reference cards, densitometer calibration tools and pdf files for monitor calibration of brightness, color and contrast.

- Doug Clifford, ACE Camera


Color Gray Card is special Fotowand's color gray card is more than a gray card. It contains six color circles also with 18% reflectance - yellow, magenta, cyan, orange red, green and violet blue. It also includes two gray reference circles, one darker and one lighter than the 18% gray background.		Unique Patented Design