Originally Posted by Damian S.
Welcome,Damian!
I'd say not too addicted, especially if you shoot in RAW. Personally, I shoot a mix of RAW and JPG. For the RAW shots in a portrait setting, I'll put a SpyderCube in one of the shots, handy for exposure and WB adjustment on the RAW files in post (I also include an X-Rite ColorChecker Passport in that reference shot). For the JPG shots, I mostly rely on one of the preset WB settings (daylight, cloudy, etc.) as appropriate for the scene. When I'm in a tricky lighting situation (e.g. indoors with equal lighting from windows and tungsten), I'll sometimes use my ColorRight to set a custom WB.
FWIW, the Canon manual suggests using a white card to set white balance. In reality, gray vs. white makes no real difference as long as they are spectrally neutral (but note that you'd want a white balance card, not a sheet of copy paper - papers usually have bluing agents added to make them appear 'whiter and brighter' meaning they are not spectrally neutral). The 18% gray card was primarily used for setting exposure, not white balance (because in the days of the gray card and manual exposure settings, white balance didn't exist - we bought color-balanced films for the conditions we'd be shooting in, with no way to change 'on the fly'). However, gray cards are spectrally neutral so they work well for setting a custom WB.
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