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Lights, Flash, Indoor photos....OH MY!
Does anyone have a recommendation for a light to use when photographing items indoors with a light box? I am not a photographer and normally leave this stuff to the pros, however, I do need to photograph products I sell online and need help in the lighting area. I have been using a cheap 45 dollar light box with the lights that came with it. The indoor photos tend to come out dark or yellow and basically just suck.
I have to gather all my stuff and set up outside to get some natural light and sometimes those come out blue-ish but I can work with that.
So what do ya recommend for a light and where to purchase one? Just go down to say Wolf Camera or something?
I appreciate your time. Thanks
Jo
I have to gather all my stuff and set up outside to get some natural light and sometimes those come out blue-ish but I can work with that.
So what do ya recommend for a light and where to purchase one? Just go down to say Wolf Camera or something?
I appreciate your time. Thanks
Jo
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Here's one I did:
http://digitalgrin.com/showthread.php?t=51457
Simple, cheap and effective.
Z
Use those to illuminate the light tent and you should be pretty close to believable colors anyway.
(I don't recommend this approach for people and fleshtones and other pure colors like brass or gold etc.)
Here is an example:
Other than that, compact "speedlite" electronic flashes are better for color purity. You can use a matched pair on either side of the light tent and trigger them with optical slaves. You can use a small external flash on the camera to trigger the "main" flashes.
(You can also use an off-camera cord or even a PC cord and adapters, depending on your camera, but I really recommend the master-slave arrangement. The lack of cords really speeds things up.)
Moderator of the Cameras and Accessories forums
If the photos are too dark, then they are probably under exposed - How did you meter and expose these images? Can you post a few so we can see them?
If they are too yellow, I suspect you did not have you camera's white balance setting correct for the lamps you used. Did you shoot with a Tungsten setting or a Daylight setting? Using a daylight setting with tungsten lighting will cause your images to be way too yellow. A tungsten setting out of doors will give a very blue image.
You can use either tungsten lighting, daylight balanced compact fluorescent bulbs, or flash. Any should work if exposed and color balanced correctly. Learning to set a custom white balance for your camera will help get the correct color even better.
Zanotti's description of an easy to build light tent is great.
Moderator of the Technique Forum and Finishing School on Dgrin
What you want to do is grab a piece of white paper (or even better, go to your camera shop and get a grey card for a few bucks), put it in the light tent where you want the object to be, and take a photo so the paper fills the frame.
Then go into the menu for set manual white balance, it will ask you to pick a photo... so pick the one you just took. Then set your white balance to the manual setting (not daylight, shade, etc) and it'll use the exact colour temperature in your light box. I'm sorry if these instructions are vague, every camera is a little different.
It's important to make sure that all the lights are the same exact brand of bulb and wattage. if you're outside other objects that reflect into lightbox can change the lighting too. Mixed lighting is hard to deal with as you basically have different colours coming from either side.
Jo