Photo box problems

[Missnibbles]

Okay, so I stuck with 1/30, that's what looks best I think, and now I just loaded up more on flickr, does it look like I should set it to tungsten? I turned the room light off like you suggested. I can't tell if that's the whitest or if it's too blue looking.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11202629@N04/?saved=1

If I change background colors from the gray to something else will I have to start all over? Or will these settings be pretty close?

[KentDub]

Unfortunatly I'm not at home so I can't eyedropper it. The tungsten does look a bit cool - although it is in the company of yellow images so it could be a perception issue. The tungsten, however, is definatly the best of the batch.

The police car looks correct - the card looks off white to me; I'm not however on a calibrated monitor right now.

Since you're in full manual mode, changing the background - or anything for that matter (except the lights) won't change anything, exposure wise. If you, lets say, use a bright orange background - you will end up with a sublte orange color cast on your subjects. I wouldn't worry too much about it at the momment. Using the settings you used for the tunsten @ 1/30sec shot - try taking an exposure of something vibrant and colorful and see how it turns out

[Missnibbles]

Okay, well, that was interesting. I'm still having a lot of the same problems unfortunately. But, maybe having my camera set consistently will mean I can photoshop everything into the correct whitebalance? I used my camera like I normally do, a few head on shots, like with the policecar, and a few angled slightly at a 45 degree angle, but head on, and a few slightly from above. The color variations are... a lot, as you'll notice. Some of them, like the orange buttons, never got even close even though I took several pictures. Some of them had some pretty close, and some really far off, like the marbled brown buttons.

Could I set up a photoshop level's script to set the levels, and then it would work on 'all' the pictures so I could just do one massive photoshoot and then have photoshop do the script then just toss any particularly bad shots? Or is this going to be much more difficult then that? I've got like... thousands of pictures to take, I was really hoping I could end up with a set up in which I could just get everything right, then crop and post to my shop. If that's not really possible, then I'd hope it would be like take a ton of pictures, adjust the levels in some sort of easy to do way, and then crop and post- Hopefully that's not just a girl with a button and a dream, and instead, an easy to do reality! Lol.

Here is a set from my photoshoot- same background and lights didn't move at all...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11202629@N04/?saved=1

[Colin Southern]

OK - good progress here

To me, even 1/15th didn't seem over exposed - but what we're really after here is consistency. So if you can always set the camera the same - always have the same lighting - and always have the same camera to subject distance then you should always get the same result.

If you can, take some shots of a variety of things, but also include something white or grey next to it - post them somewhere - and I'll white balance them for you and post them back here. That way we'll know 2 things ...

1 - that the manual exposure thing is now sorted, and

2 - that white balance is infact the remainder of the problem

The good news is that if everything is consistent then we only need to work out what the correct colour temperature and tint compensations are, and then we can apply them automatically for accurate results every time.

We're on the home stretch now

By the way - the camera you have should be fine for this - not quite ideal, but good enough I suspect

[Missnibbles]

Oh man, I can't believe we're on the home stretch, it totally feels like we didn't do much yet. Okay, I'll add some white in to all the pictures and take another set so we can figure it out.

[Missnibbles]

Okay well, I retook pictures of all the same buttons, but I included the bags which have a nice white label on them. Hopefully that's enough to figure out the rest of the stuff. I'm not sure the distance is super consistent, but definitely within a few inches. If I need to be more consistent on that I can.

Exposure metering is still on centerspot, I don't think anyone said if it's supposed to stay there or move or something. Let me know if it should be changed.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11202629@N04/?saved=1

[Colin Southern]

OK - here's what I came up with. Some notes ...

1. White balance was quite inconsistant - I'm guessing tha the camera is just getting it wrong (not great surprise there). I think the best approach is going to be for you to include a gray card (or something equivalent and/or "close enough") into each shot (doesn't have to be large), and then crop it out afterwards, after using it to correctly white balance the shot.

2. I think that you're still under-exposing - I'd suggest doubling whatever you did these at (ie if it was 1/30th, try 1/15th).

3. I think your enclosure isn't ideal - what I'd suggest is throwing away the black floor and rear and simply replacing it with a single piece of black card. (that starts vertical at the top, and ends up horizontal at the bottom) (don't put any creases in it, but you can make the bend at the bottom quite abrupt so that the product doesn't slide off or appear to be on too much of an angle.

What version of Photoshop are you using?

[Missnibbles]

I'm using CS Photoshop CS3 Extended Version 10.

I could definitely buy some sort of posterboard, I mostly had the little platform under the cloth because my lights won't point at the floor very well. Should I get a gray posterboard background? Will that be enough to double as a gray card, or not really? Would a light pink background be harder to white balance?

My shop is www.mjboutique.com And yeah, the pictures are way inconsistent, but I was trying to think of a way to help it look cohesive and branded a little bit, so people look at the pictures and immediately think of my shop. That's why I was thinking maybe a pink. I'm just not sure if that's going to make these kinds of problems harder, and I definitely don't need them to be harder. Lol!

[Missnibbles]

I"m not sure what I should be getting for the grey card thing, would a paint sample card work? Should I just get a bunch of greys and you guys can tell me if it's the right one? Should I get whites and blacks too?

[Colin Southern]

'Morning (he says rubbing his eyes after the courier got him out of bed a few minutes ago!) ...

A gray background would work fine - and a gray paint sample card would work well too. The advantage of a gray background is that you wouldn't need to do any cropping - but I guess it really comes down to "the look" that you're after with the product. If you were to use a grey backdrop you'd need to be ultra-consistent with your exposures and lighting or the backgrounds will be all over the place.

If you wanted to use pink it would work just fine - but - you'd definately need to have the gray reference card in the shot for white balancing, UNLESS we can get your camera producing consistent colour results which we haven't tested yet. Tell me one thing - with regards to the 5 shots that I white balanced for you above - I'm assuming that the camera was in automatic white balancing mode? (due to the varience in colour temp that I had) - if so - and you'd like to test something for me - try doing another 5 with the camera set to tungsten.

Having CS3 is great because you can process JPEGs through it's RAW converter (which I'm assuming is what your camera produces) to easily correct white balance.

With regards to the backdrop - only reason I mention it is that the way you have it now you're getting the edges showing, and they're degrading the quality of the shot considerably (not related to white balancing or exposure though), but compare it to this shot which I took the other day to get an idea of what your backgrounds could look like.

With regards to gray cards ... I'll give you a quick primer ...

... In any shot we take, the colour of the light influences the colour of the shot (eg "shine a red light on white paper and you get red paper). If you have a gray card in the shot (any shade of gray is fine, so long as it's spectrally neutral) (ie it's doesn't have any colour bias). When you shine a coloured light on it it colours the card (and also changes the colour of the rest of the scene) - but - when we get it into Photoshop we can use the white balance eyedropper tool to sample the "colour" of the gray card ... photoshop knows that it SHOULD be neutral - sees that it's not - an so adjusts the entire image so that it IS neutral - and "hey presto", job done.

In practice you can also use a white card, so long as the exposure isn't so bright that it effectively becomes a blown highlight (in which case it's technically a gray card again anyway, just vastly skewed towards the white end of the scale).

Hope all this makes sense

[Missnibbles]

Well, this background is really really pink, probably a little too pink, but I figured I could test with it. I added in a bunch of gray cards, I hope one of those will work. I was thinking maybe I could paint the box gray and then just have it in the shots? If that will work then maybe I"ll just add an mj to the side and pretend it's there to make my photos look really branded.

The tungsten setting was on for all of the shoots. I don't know if it's a good idea to keep it on or not.

I don't know what the RAW thing is. Other then undercooked meat. I assume you don't want me to throw hamburger at Photoshop.

I am totally willing to learn how to white balance better using Photoshop, but basically, I at this point know how to do three things, one is crop, the other is to adjust the colors using the dropper on white, black and gray, and the other is to make a script thing to automate the process. So, anything else I'll need detailed instructions.

Here's the shots I took.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11202629@N04/?saved=1

Oh, I just realized there was no white in the picture, again, I have no idea if you need it or whatever, but I added some white and changed the shutter speed to 1/15 for the two I just added.

[KentDub]

This is the gray/white card I use:
http://www.amazon.com/Lastolite-LL-L...9966018&sr=8-2

You can get cheaper ones, for around $15. They're designed to be completely neutral, for this purpose - something that gray spray paint isn't. Although you can do without, it is an extremely valuable tool.

Do you have Bridge CS3 installed with your copy of Photoshop? It's an awsome tool that you can use to automate a lot of this without needing to resort scripts.

[Missnibbles]

I don't know what the bridge thing is, I might have it.

Hmm, so I can't just paint the box in some way to make it workable, that's a bummer. I'm not sure how I"ll get the cards comfortably in the shot and yet still in an easy to crop out location. I'm sure that's going to take a lot of practice on my part.

[KentDub]

Hmm, so I can't just paint the box in some way to make it workable, that's a bummer. I'm not sure how I"ll get the cards comfortably in the shot and yet still in an easy to crop out location. I'm sure that's going to take a lot of practice on my part.

You can definatly get it workable. This is just another point you'll have to make a distinction if the extra quality is worth it. A real white/gray card will get it dead-on every time. The card only need to be bearly showing in the shot - they don't need to be all the way inside it, just a corner sticking in.

As I read your earlier post where you mentioned you will be taking thousands of pictures, it made me rethink the advice I gave about just trying to get by with what you have. The quality of the images can make or break a sale, so it might be in your best interest to continue to learn, and perhaps upgrade your equipment a bit to get the best quality possible.

[Missnibbles]

Thousands, hmm, well I can probably take a lot less if some of them are salvagable. Lol

I've got 100 or so items in my shop, and I'd like to add another 500 or so... slowly. I'm not making much money yet, so I"d rather wait to upgrade when I actually have some profit, that said, I worry that my lousy pictures are slowing the profit down. It's a tricky balance.

Maybe I can figure out a way to use the cards better, I am just not very good at any of this yet so it's a bit intimidating. I'll pick some to order.

[Colin Southern]

Well, this background is really really pink, probably a little too pink, but I figured I could test with it. I added in a bunch of gray cards, I hope one of those will work. I was thinking maybe I could paint the box gray and then just have it in the shots? If that will work then maybe I"ll just add an mj to the side and pretend it's there to make my photos look really branded.

The tungsten setting was on for all of the shoots. I don't know if it's a good idea to keep it on or not.

I don't know what the RAW thing is. Other then undercooked meat. I assume you don't want me to throw hamburger at Photoshop.

I am totally willing to learn how to white balance better using Photoshop, but basically, I at this point know how to do three things, one is crop, the other is to adjust the colors using the dropper on white, black and gray, and the other is to make a script thing to automate the process. So, anything else I'll need detailed instructions.

Here's the shots I took.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11202629@N04/?saved=1

Oh, I just realized there was no white in the picture, again, I have no idea if you need it or whatever, but I added some white and changed the shutter speed to 1/15 for the two I just added.

Hi again

All forward progress I think

I think 1/15th is working a lot better - all I needed to do in post-processing was raise the black point slightly.

Colour wise, The front gray card was the best, but having said that, the white label was just as good. Technically, not as good as one of the ones Kent suggested, but probably good enough for this kind of work.

I'm surprised that the previous shots were all with the camera set to tungsten as the colour temps were all over the place. Not a biggie, but it does go a long way to explaining why you were getting inconsistent results before - all it means in practice is that you're going to have to white balance each shot individually which is only 1 click of the mouse, so no big deal

I am a bit surprised at the grotty light inside your lightbox - it seems quite harsh for something that's supposed to be ultra-soft - you could try moving the lights a bit further away, but you'd then also have to adjust your exposure. Might be worth trying. It might be OK for small stuff - your call really.

Using the RAW converter is easy ... if you pop into Photoshop - click on Edit -> Preferences -> file handling you need to tick the box that says "Prefer Adobe camera RAW for supported files" (or words to that effect) - then click the "Camera RAW Preferences" button and make sure that (at the bottom of the dialog box) it's set to "Automatically Open All Supported JPEGs". Click OK - job done. Next time you double-click on a jpeg it should open in Camera RAW. Let me know if you get this bit sorted and then I'll cover white balancing with you

I don't know what the bridge thing is, I might have it.

Hmm, so I can't just paint the box in some way to make it workable, that's a bummer. I'm not sure how I"ll get the cards comfortably in the shot and yet still in an easy to crop out location. I'm sure that's going to take a lot of practice on my part.

If you have CS2 then you'll have Bridge. In your case though the only thing it's going to be useful for is opening a whole bunch of shots in ACR (Adobe Camera RAW) in one go. If would have been nice to use it to batch correct all your shots, but with your white balance being all over the show, that parts not going to work very well.

In a nutshell, you can paint the inside of the box any colour you like (what we're doing here is trying to get accurate colour, whatever colour that happens to be) - but black will make processing a lot more consistent - anything lighter and you'll have to be either VERY consistent with your exposure / lighting etc - or end up having to adjust each one.

Don't sweat the gray card thing - it doesn't have to be big (even 1cm is fine).

[Missnibbles]

Okay, so, I'm kinda confused again. I spray painted the box a gray color I had randomly in the garage. I figured I could stick my labels on the sides if you think it will make for a nice shot. Are you saying it would be better if it was black? Or should I totally ditch the little box idea? (I just printed up paper to check the layout, I can print actual labels like the button bags, but I didn't want to do it unless I was sure it was a good idea)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/11202629@N04/?saved=1

I scooted the lights back like you suggested, but I don't really understand what you meant by it being harsh.

I changed the shutter speed again, and I"m not sure which to pick. I think I got the RAW setting correct, so now how would I balance the whitebalance? Should I take the camera off tungsten?

[Missnibbles]

Wow, yes, the RAW thing is working. I have no idea how to use that.

[Colin Southern]

Okay, so, I'm kinda confused again. I spray painted the box a gray color I had randomly in the garage. I figured I could stick my labels on the sides if you think it will make for a nice shot. Are you saying it would be better if it was black? Or should I totally ditch the little box idea? (I just printed up paper to check the layout, I can print actual labels like the button bags, but I didn't want to do it unless I was sure it was a good idea)

There's quite a few things we can to to get an accurate neutral colour reference; so there's no "right" or "wrong" way so long as a particular way works. So in this respect if you use the white sticker or the gray card or gray walls then all should work OK.

Having just said that ...

... Shots like the pink background definately make for a nice shot -- but -- I'm working on the assumption that you need both a "nice shot" and a "consistent shot" when photographing multiple objects - and that's where using something other than black could make things harder for you. Not impossible by any means, but black is very "forgiving" in that once you get there, it doesn't matter if the light level drops even further - so once you pass that magical black threshold then "you're there" whereas with anything else then you have to hit it with exactly the same amount of light each time. Perhaps it's a bit like rolling a small steel ball inside a tube ... trying to keep it in the middle requires precision whereas once it's hit the end it doesn't matter what angle you tip the tube to. Bad example, but hopefully you get the idea

I scooted the lights back like you suggested, but I don't really understand what you meant by it being harsh.

It's a measure of how "defined" shadows are. An example of a harsh shadow would be one that's appears around a car on a cloudless day, whereas on a very cloudy day - when the sun is covered - you'll notice that the edges of the shadows are a lot softer because the light is coming from many more directions. A softbox is supposed to do the same thing - and yet on some of your shots (like with the car in it) I was just a little surprised at the shadows. Not a biggie for small stuff - so probably not something we should sidetrack ourselves on.

I changed the shutter speed again, and I"m not sure which to pick. I think I got the RAW setting correct, so now how would I balance the whitebalance? Should I take the camera off tungsten?

I think 1/15th is the one to stick with for now - and it the colour temps are going to be all over the place then you may as well try to keep them in the ballpark by keeping it on tungsten (that's what I would do anyway).

Good to hear that you've got the RAW converter working - it'll be a lifesaver for you. To white balance a shot using ACR all you need to do is press the "I" key (or click on the white balance eye-dropper on the toolbar at the top) and then click on your white lable or gray card - it'll instantly correct the colours for you. The other adjustments on the right hand side do many things - have a play with all of them, but the one you'll probably want to use the most for this kind of work is the slider called "Blacks". Probably good at this stage if you would try opening a few of your shots in ACR and try white balancing them for yourself; it's a piece of cake when you get the hang of it

[PopsPhotos]

I realize I'm coming into this quite late, but I'm wondering about the flicker rate of the fluorescents. Unlike incandescents, fluorescents flicker at the cycle rate of the power lines. Thus, in the US, they are on for 1/30th of a second and off for 1/30th of a second. A trick I've use (for a completely different purpose from photography) is to install half the bulbs oriented left to right in their sockets and the other half right to left. Thus, half the bulbs are on when the other half are off.

This could be the source of the wildly differing color schemes.

Ask an epileptic what fluorescents do to the psyche. You will discover why I discovered that trick. It saved my daughter's daycare center.

Pops