Shooting quilts with flash indoors

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I was shooting some pictures of quilts that my wife had made recently, and was wondering if there was/is some way of improving the results I've been getting.
This morning I used my D7000 w/SB 600 and 18-200 lens, as well as my NEX 7 w/Canon 35mm lens just for comparison.
Would it help if I were to take a picture of a pure white card to help set WB later?
I shoot against a pale yellow wall so that won't help. I guess I could shoot the ceiling as it is white.


This is a crop of one of the shots. Flash was bounced off the ceiling to even out the exposure (compared to other shots I'd taken).
Any suggestions would be great.

[Geoff F]

Setting your white balance by doing a Custom White Balance will always help, and shooting Raw will give a relatively easy way of correcting any problems.

I have successfully used a sheet of slightly off white material, better than nothing, but a proper Grey Card will always give the best results.

Using flash will always be risky, particularly if you are using just a single camera mounted unit.

Bouncing can work, if you get the angle correct, but there is always a chance of still getting light variation from top to bottom.

Sometimes, using just the ambient light but setting a long exposure, obviously on a tripod, will give the best results. No firm rules here, simply a case of experimenting with different options to see what works best for your individual circumstances.

[Stagecoach]

It would help using a WB card but also exposing correctly, this is about 1.5 underexposed.

Is the white fabric white?

[JR1]

Personally I would not use flash

Daylight

[Mike Buckley]

I don't know your goals, but for me a photo of a quilt should display the texture, not just the color. Indeed, some quilts have a pattern sewn into fabric that is a solid color.

The only way to optimally display the texture is to allow the light to rake across the top of the quilt, ideally using a relatively small light source. Using the ceiling as a reflector makes it a relatively large light source, which explains why little texture is displayed in your image. Though the sun is large, its immense distance from the subject makes it relatively small. You could place a man-made light close to the quilt to achieve similar results.

If you have a practical way of using sunlight, that would be ideal because you could display the texture and achieve the same brightness throughout the quilt. If you have no practical place to make that happen, you will probably need to use multiple flash units.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Thanks for the replies.
Yes, the white material in this one is white, according to my wife.
I think this exposure shows the 'texture' adequately. What I'm looking for is a way to get the colors correctly represented. I would prefer not to use a flash too, but there's a window to the left of the quilt pictured, that is on the same wall, and I've tried to keep it out of the frame so it doesn't interfere with the camera metering. We put up a board along the top of the wall so we could stick push pins in to hold the quilts. This wall is 'behind' the front door so it's not so noticeable. Today we actually have some RAIN here in So Cal so it's not as bright out as it normally is here. If it were sunny I'd hang them outside in front of the garage door as the sun hits it at about a 30* angle around this time of day (noonish here) during the winter.
I have another flash unit and I think what is supposed to be a slave to fire it. I'll have to experiment with it off camera.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

So here is the same picture with the exposure at +1.5.



Are you saying this looks more correctly exposed?

[DanK]

There have been a lot of discussions here of techniques for getting a correct white balance. I think the simplest is this:

1. buy yourself a spectrally neutral card. Use this instead of a white piece of paper, because white paper comes in a wide variety of different shades, with different color temparatures. I use a small whiBal (google it) that fits comfortably in my shirt pocket.
2. Shoot raw
3. Take one shot with the whiBal included, making sure that the card is getting the same light as the object you are concerned with. If you are not substantially mixing different light sources, it doesn't matter which source you use (e.g., flash, tungsten, daylight), and the WB setting on the camera doesn't matter. (It will give the software a starting point but will have zero effect on the file itself.)
4. Use software to set WB from the image of the card. In most software, this is trivial.
5. Adjust to taste. I often like a tad warmer than neutral.
6. Copy or sync this WB setting to the other images.

Using Lightroom, which is my raw converstion software, this whole process takes almost no time--a few seconds to set white balance with the eyedropper tool, and a few more to sync. If you want to adjust, that will take as little or as much time as you want.

[Manfred M]

Unless you have a couple of studio strobes and large softboxes (and a room large enough to use them in), I would go with Jeremy's advice and would stick with diffuse, natural lighting. The SB600 bounced off the ceiling is not going to give you an even enough light distribution, If you look at the image you have posted, the light across the top of the image is fairly even, but as you get lower, the light drops off and the bottom is not as bright as the top an the bottom right corner is quite dark.

When you bounce a light off the ceiling, you are going to get the dropoff effect lower down and if your bounce light is not centred, you will get the left to right gradient as well. Just to complicate matters a bit more, you are going to get light not only from the ceiling, but also some it it coming off the walls. If the ceiling is white and the walls are yellow, you are going to introduce a yellow cast to the light.

If you have a room with a large window that does not get direct light (north facing window would work well) with neutral coloured walls and hung the quilt on the opposite wall, you should be able to achieve a nice even lighting pattern. I'd pop my camera on a tripod, in portrait orientation with the camera set up to be perpendicular to the quilt,with the len at the same height as the middle of the quilt, so as to not introduce any distortion. Your camera should be as far back as you can get it to ensure you and your camera don't cast a shadow on the subject.

Make sure that the quilt is hanging down and relatively flat (you might have to pin it) as I see some waves in the image you posted.

As others have pointed out, a white or gray target should be included in your test shot and then used to set the white balance on the RAW output. I've had reasonably good luck with just about any white target, including a piece of paper. It may not be "perfect", but may be good enought for what you are doing. Check your histogram to ensure that you do have a good exposure and set the white balance in post, based on your target's reading.

While I understand where Mike is coming from with his comment on texture, I don't think it is relevent when you are taking a shot of the whole quilt. Texture is unlikely to be noticable unless you are doing a real closeup shot.

[Mike Buckley]

Texture is unlikely to be noticable unless you are doing a real closeup shot.

That depends partly on how large the print is. A print that is 20 inches on the short side could be about one-fourth the size of the quilt (depending of course on the quilt) and will reveal the texture very nicely.

If the OP's reasoning is that the texture can already be seen in the size and lighting displayed here, imagine how much better it could be revealed at a larger size and with the subject lit to enhance it.

See this image as an example. Even when displayed at such a relatively small size, the texture stands out quite nicely in my mind.

[jcuknz]

So here is the same picture with the exposure at +1.5.


Are you saying this looks more correctly exposed?

Certainly much better, not muddy like the first [ except for the righthand side as Manfred noted ]. Any copying needs to be done with flat light [ unless you are after more texture as Mike wants ] and you need two lights of the same output placed at 45 degrees either side at mid height of subject and directed at the opposite 2/3rd to even things. I think you could have problems with the flashes not being a matched pair and all-in-all I would go for ambient light, indoors or out as is possible. Though a couple of identical household lamps could work if shooting RAW. I assume you have a tripod and familiar with mirror lock and delay release and leaving camera/rig untouched during the countdown and exposure. Second nature to me but some people persist in holding the gear.

[Loose Canon]

Along with a correct white balance adjusting for correct black/white points will help you get correct color. This shot has quite a bit of room for that adjustment.

When getting correct color rendition is an absolute must I use a Colorchecker Passport and its associated software.

The previous exposure corrected and the previous exposure corrected with white/black point correction. I didn't even look at the exposure.



Btw? Your wife does beautiful work!

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Thank you all for the suggestions and compliment. This quilt had challenging directions which made it a joint effort.
The right hand lower corner isn't being held 'flat' against the wall, so that is probably part of the reason it looks the way it does. I'm trying to come up with a way to 'tension' the quilts so they hang flatter but have yet to come up with the ultimate solution, so for now they just hang from the two pins in the upper corners. The sunlight coming in from the window directly to the left of the quilt is also a 'problem' I'm dealing with. Don't know if cutting it off completely would help or not. This was shot on a tripod, but I wasn't using my remote release (shame on me). I've taken long exposure shots using ambient light, but those have been mainly of my cameras. I don't think the ambient light would show the vibrancy of the colors, especially today since it's FINALLY RAINING here in southern California!!!!
Maybe it's a good day to try some more experimenting with the flash(es) since it is quite gloomy out.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

Here is my setup for 'outdoor' shooting. I guess the quilting pattern really does show up better under natural lighting, here's a link:

Color test pattern anyone?

[Mike Buckley]

I guess the quilting pattern really does show up better under natural lighting

It's not that it's sunlight that is making it happen; any light properly implemented will make it happen. Instead, it's that using sunlight is going to be the easiest way to make it happen for all the reasons already explained.

[ajohnw]

You can improve it more with PP but only you know what it should look like.



The steps are fairly simple.

I added gradient filter to even up top and bottom brightness - fiddly and I feel that there will always be some left even with bounce flash as distances to subject still vary. Optional but you could try that.

1 1/4 stop exposure increase
Contrast increase - keep an eye on the histogram as this will stretch it out so exposure increase may need changing.
Saturation increase - same note as above but generally not so much.
Last but not least sharpening. Packages vary in how this is spec'd. On reduced shots I'm fond of a rad of 2 and increase the amount slowly so that the image crisps up. The package I use has a max setting of 200 and i used 25 with a threshold of 1. I find this is a typical value for sharpening after reduction - I suspect apart from exposure this is the main problem with the shot.

On this shot using flash I would try it off camera with the flash behind me. as far away as possible and at sufficient height to avoid shadows and also to prevent any reflections bouncing straight back into the camera lens - might work might not.

White balance seems ok to me. A spot balance shifted it slightly. The white could be trimmed up to match what ever it actually is with careful use of a warmer cooler slider. Guessing the material type I suspect it is as it should be.

I assume you don't mind people working on the image. If you do let me know and I will delete it. 5 mins work by some one else can be a big help at times.

John
-

[AlwaysOnAuto]

I don't mind at all John. I've never really done much PP on my pictures. I always just tried to get the OOC to look like what I was taking a picture of. To be honest, some of the photos I see posted here on CinC don't look 'real' to me. But maybe that's just me.
Your manipulations have brought out the quilting that is in this quilt nicely, thank you.
Guess I need to do some playing around with my software. Since I lost my Vista computer I only have CyberLink PhotoDirector to play with. I'm kind of surprised it has as much to it as it does. Funny story, I used to work with a guy that is/was a three time Photoshop Guru Award winner and didn't even know it.

[ajohnw]

I don't mind at all John. I've never really done much PP on my pictures. I always just tried to get the OOC to look like what I was taking a picture of. To be honest, some of the photos I see posted here on CinC don't look 'real' to me. But maybe that's just me.
Your manipulations have brought out the quilting that is in this quilt nicely, thank you.
Guess I need to do some playing around with my software. Since I lost my Vista computer I only have CyberLink PhotoDirector to play with. I'm kind of surprised it has as much to it as it does. Funny story, I used to work with a guy that is/was a three time Photoshop Guru Award winner and didn't even know it.

You probably have contrast, brightness and saturation. Mixes of contrast and saturation tend to enhance colours so it's a case of playing around until you get what you want. Brightness - more or less the same as an exposure change. Sharpening after a shot has been reduced in size is more or less essential. It helps make up for the detail that is lost due to the size reduction.

I prefer the real look too. Not very popular.

John
-

[Shadowman]

So here is the same picture with the exposure at +1.5.



Are you saying this looks more correctly exposed?

Very vibrant.

[AlwaysOnAuto]

John & John, thank you for the help/comments. Yes, this quilt is one of her more vibrant ones with colors I can live with everyday. Some of her others, eh, not so much as they can get pretty wild looking (see link in previous post to see what I mean).
Here are some screen shots of the software I have to work with now on my Win 8.1 computer. I was surprised to see it does so much as it came loaded on the hard drive.










As you can see it is pretty complete from what I can tell as far as being able to manipulate all the parameters of an image. I just need to learn how to do that.