DIY Desktop Studio mock-up --C&C desperately needed

[John Morton]

Other lights in the room - ceiling bulbs, desk lamps, that sort of thing - which can add in different color temperatures to the overall lighting mix.

Mixed color temperatures of that kind are difficult to sort out afterward.

Usually, just having the same color output for all of your lights - without too much worry about what that is, at first - is a big step in the right direction.

[Mike Buckley]

Other light sources????? oh geez.

Be glad you can control them in this situation. One of my most important photos was taken in a hospital's neonatal intensive care unit. It was important partly because it was my first picture of my nephew and the first picture by anyone of him and his mother. More important, I knew he was so fragile that it could have easily have been the last picture ever taken of him. (He did great and is flourishing four years later.)

No flash was allowed because he was so premature that it could have damaged his eyes; I had no control over the light source. The main light source was fluorescent lights in the ceiling. The little bed he was in had warming lights above him that were another color temperature. One of the medical devices attached to him emitted a small but strong, green light. I wanted the same color balance throughout the entire image, so I had to selectively alter the color balance in each area being influenced by a particular light source. Trust me that it's far easier to get the color balance uniform in the capture rather than having to do it during the post-processing.