Playing with custom white balance

I’m really glad I applied as a photographer at iStock, and I’m even more thrilled I got rejected. Why? Because the rejection mail included a link to this article on how to do a custom white balance, which I just followed, and I took the photo on the right, which I never would’ve been able to without understanding custom white balance.

And it’s not hard at all, it’s just that I didn’t know what that setting was for. And now I do. Now I know how they take those photos with the very very white background. Easy as pie.

Taking that photo, though, reminded me of something. I once saw a photographer on TV who had his camera on a tripod next to his Mac, and whenever he’d taken a new photo, it would instantly show up on his Mac’s screen, so he could see if all the details were just right, before moving on.

What does such a setup require? I’d really like to have something like that, and I imagine it can’t be that expensive. I think it would make the feedback loop so much faster that I’d learn a lot faster from my failures.

Does anyone here know how to do that?