In this week’s YouTube vlog, I show you how to use the Datacolor Spydercube for better white balance in your images.
White balance is critical in your images. Making sure the image is free of colour casts is a must for any serious photographer out there. Skip over this knowledge at your peril! You can buy your own here: https://geni.us/So6KoO
Once you’ve taken a look at this vlog, take a look at my YouTube vlog where I explain how to use curves in Adobe Lightroom to colour correct your images. The vlog is entitled How to Get A Good White Balance for Landscape Photography. It will get you started with explaining how RGB correlates to CMY, so you can make much better decisions when post-processing your images.
Throughout the year, I offer photography tours and workshops in a variety of destinations around the world. If you’re interested in learning more from me to help you get the best out of your photography, then get in touch.
The Datacolor Spydercube is a simple tool, and the box contents are equally simple. Inside, I found:
The pouch is more important than it might first appear. Datacolor warns that the surface of the cube can be affected if it spends too much time rubbing against clothing or fabric that has detergent residue on it. If that surface changes, the accuracy of the cube changes with it, and that defeats the point of carrying it in the first place.
So, although the Datacolor Spydercube is small and easy to throw into a camera bag, I would not leave it loose in a pocket or mixed in with bits of kit. I would keep it in the pouch and keep it clean.
Size is one of its strengths. It is light, easy to carry, and quick to bring out for a test frame. That matters when I am working outside, and the light is shifting, because a tool like this only helps if it is practical enough to use without slowing everything down.
If you want to pick one up yourself, the Datacolor SpyderCube is the one I used here.
I take white balance seriously because colour casts can spoil an image even when the composition and exposure are sound. If I can get the file closer in camera, I save time later, and I have a better starting point when I begin processing.
That matters even more in the sort of photography I do. As a professional landscape and travel photographer, I often work in mixed light, side light, shade, church interiors, and scenes where the subject is far from the camera. In those situations, auto white balance can do a decent job, but it does not always give me the colour I want.
Sometimes the result is subtle. The image might look fine on the back of the camera, yet when I compare two files side by side, the difference becomes obvious. One version feels cleaner, while the other feels flat or muddy.
Before I worry about white balance, I always want the exposure right first.
That point came up again and again whilst I was testing the Datacolor Spydercube. White balance tools are helpful, but they do not replace good exposure. If the exposure is poor, fixing colour later becomes harder and less reliable.
The Datacolor Spydercube gives me a set of reference tones in the same light that is falling on my subject. That lets me take a test frame and then use those known values later in Lightroom or Photoshop.
The cube includes several useful parts:
The mid-tone grey is the part I am most likely to use when I want a neutral white balance reading. In Lightroom, I can use the eyedropper on that grey surface and check whether the RGB values sit close together. If they do not, the file has a colour cast.
The white and black surfaces help me judge tonal placement. The white should sit high without clipping too badly, and the black should not be confused with the deeper black inside the recessed hole.
The recessed hole is useful because it gives me a point of maximum black. When I inspect that area in Lightroom, I know it should read darker than the 5% black surface on the cube itself. If those values are not separated clearly, something is off.
The globe helps me see specular highlights. If strong sunlight strikes the cube, the shiny area will catch that reflection. That is useful because it shows how bright the direct light is and helps me understand what is happening in the scene.
This is not a complicated tool, but that is what I like about it. It gives me a clean set of references without much fuss.
The key is placement. I want the same light that falls on the subject to fall on the cube, and I want the black hole to face the camera so I can read it properly later.
I can hand-hold the Datacolor Spydercube, and because of the weighted design, it hangs in a stable position. There is also a thread at the bottom so I can mount it if I need a more controlled setup. Outdoors, hand-holding is often enough. Indoors, especially with long exposures, a second tripod makes life much easier.
When I was testing the cube, I kept coming back to one thing. Exposure comes first. On the back of the camera, I watched the histogram, checked clipping, and adjusted exposure before I bothered with any white balance comparison.
I was working with a Canon 5D Mark IV for much of this test, often with a 24-70mm lens. On the lone tree scene, for example, I was at 70mm, f/11, and around 1/15 sec. In the church, I used a tilt-shift lens and much longer exposures. The exact settings changed, but the process did not.
When I use the Datacolor Spydercube on location, my process is simple:
That gave me a clean way to compare the camera’s judgment against a neutral reference.
I did not want to test the Datacolor Spydercube in only one type of light. A tool like this has to work when conditions change, so I tried it in four different scenes in central France.
The first scene was a lone tree in early morning light, with the sun off to the side. It was the end of March, around 9 o’clock, and the field had that fresh spring colour that can shift quickly from warm to cold depending on the white balance.
With auto white balance, the file looked acceptable on the back of the camera. When I switched to daylight, set around 5200K, I could already see the scene cool slightly. The field looked bluer and the warmth in the light felt reduced.
Then I added the Datacolor Spydercube to the frame. Straight away, I could see that the black hole read darker than the 5% black surface, which was what I wanted. That told me the file had enough separation to use as a reference later.
For the interior test, I went to Notre-Dame la Grande in Poitiers. It is a beautiful Romanesque church, and the painted interior made it a strong test for white balance because there were rich colours on the walls and columns, plus mixed light coming from windows and artificial sources.
I worked in portrait orientation at f/11, with exposures around 15 to 20 seconds. I also had a tilt-shift lens mounted, and because of the long exposure, I placed the Datacolor Spydercube on a second tripod in front of the camera.
There were a few challenges. A strip light was over-bright, and a small reflection from an Arca-Swiss plate showed up near part of the cube. Still, there was enough clear data on the grey and white surfaces to give the test a fair shot.
Whilst driving to woodland, I found a field full of yellow flowers with a church in the distance. The light was harsh, with side light and a touch of front light, so it was a useful scene for seeing whether the cube could handle strong colour and contrast.
I took the same sequence as before, auto white balance, daylight, then a Datacolor Spydercube frame. The challenge here was practical as much as technical. Because I was working with a longer view towards the distant church, I had to reposition things to get the cube into a sensible reference frame.
That is a fair point against any tool like this. In a broad outdoor scene, the subject may be far away, and your reference object is close by. It still helps, but it is not as direct as using a grey card beside a portrait subject.
The woodland test was useful because it showed a more difficult mix of shade, tree shadow, and bits of blue sky. I compared auto white balance, daylight, and shade before bringing in the Datacolor Spydercube.
Shade mode was far too warm. The file looked muddy and heavy. Daylight warmed the trunks more than I wanted. Auto white balance was closer, especially in the sky, but there was still room to improve.
By that point in the day, it was clear to me that the Datacolor Spydercube was not about replacing judgment. It was about giving me a better reference when the camera’s presets were not quite right.
Once I got back to the computer, I opened the files in Adobe Lightroom and compared them properly. That was where the differences became clearer.
In the first tree image, auto white balance sat around 5004K with a tint of 0. After I opened the exposure by one-third of a stop, the white balance shifted by about 50 degrees, and the image immediately looked less muddy.
The daylight version looked bluer to my eye, especially in the sky. That made sense because the file moved slightly towards the cooler side.
When I sampled the Datacolor Spydercube, I looked first at the grey surface. Before correction, the RGB values were close but not equal, roughly 85.5 red, 84.1 green, and 81.9 blue. Because the blue channel was lower, Lightroom added yellow to balance it.
That shifted the white balance to around 4450K with a slight tint change. The result looked better to me. The sky felt cleaner, the tree lost some of its muddiness, and the whole frame looked more natural.
Here is the quick comparison I took from that test:
| Setting | Approx. temperature | What I saw |
|---|---|---|
| Auto white balance | 5004K to 5050K | Acceptable, but slightly muddy |
| Daylight | about 5200K | Cooler, bluer sky and field |
| Datacolor Spydercube correction | about 4450K | Cleaner sky, more believable colour |
For that scene, the Datacolor Spydercube file was the one I preferred.
The church files were more interesting. The auto white balance version sat at 3950K with tint at 11. With the Datacolor Spydercube frame, the exposure stayed the same but the values shifted slightly, around 3850K with the tint reduced by one point.
I tried sampling different parts of the cube. When I clicked one of the grey areas, Lightroom added a lot of blue. That changed the feel of the image quite strongly. Some people might like that cooler balance, but what stood out to me was what happened to the reds in the painted columns and decoration. They became cleaner and more vivid.
Sampling another part of the cube gave a similar result. The red and green channels were close, whilst the blue channel lagged behind, so Lightroom compensated for it.
In this case, I liked the Datacolor Spydercube result. The colours in the church looked richer without feeling fake, and that was enough for me to call it a success.
This scene was trickier. Auto white balance landed around 5250K, daylight around 5050K, and the Datacolor Spydercube frame showed nicely balanced RGB values even before correction because the light on the cube was direct and clean.
When I clicked the grey reference, the shift was small. The histogram moved only slightly, mostly in the blue highlights. That told me the camera was already fairly close.
Even so, the corrected version looked cleaner to me. The sky kept its colour without looking thick or dirty, and the whites and greys in the distant church looked more settled.
This was a good reminder that the cube does not always create a dramatic change. Sometimes the value is in confirming that the file is already close.
The woodland sequence gave the biggest practical lesson. Auto white balance looked good, daylight felt warmer and muddier, and shade looked too warm to use.
The Datacolor Spydercube frame was strong here because the tonal values lined up well. The black hole read at 0, which is what I wanted. The nearby black surface sat a little above that, around the right level for the 5% black. The white and grey surfaces were also where I wanted them.
When I sampled the grey, Lightroom warmed the image slightly. This time, the result made sense. It did not produce the heavy warmth of the shade preset, but it removed the chill that auto white balance sometimes leaves in shaded woodland.
In shade, the Datacolor Spydercube gave me warmth without the muddy look of the camera’s shade preset.
After using it across several scenes, I can say the Datacolor SpyderCube is useful, but I would not treat it as magic. It works best when I already understand exposure, histograms, and how white balance behaves in different light.
The practical advantages are easy to see. It is small, light, easy to carry, and quick to set up. Outdoors, I can often hand-hold it for a reference frame. Indoors, I may need an extra tripod, which slows things down a bit, but it is still manageable.
I also like that it works for both stills and video reference. If I am shooting in stable light and want a solid white balance starting point, it is a handy thing to have in the bag.
For support gear, I used a sturdy tripod setup, and the Benro TMA38CL carbon fibre tripod is the one I rely on for this kind of work.
The Datacolor Spydercube did not beat every camera setting in every scene, but it gave me something more useful than guesswork. It gave me a reliable reference, and that matters when colour is the difference between a file that feels right and one that feels slightly off.
For me, the biggest lesson was simple. Exposure first, then white balance. Once that foundation is in place, the Datacolor SpyderCube is a smart tool to carry, especially when I am working across very different types of light in the same day.
