Photography and lighting problem

Mrs Grips is trying to take pictures of her woven goods, which she is thinking of selling online. She took a few snaps with her compact indoors, under 11W or so of CFL and she was not at all happy with the way the colours came out.

So the question is, how best to approach the problem? We don’t have much in the way of light rooms in this house as it happens, but of course daylight is rather variable anyway.

I’m thinking of getting a daylight type bulb, maybe in a spotlight but I guess something more diffuse would be better. However if it were diffuse it would pick up some colour from the walls and furnishings in the house too.

I have had a go with my DSLR too, just tweaking the WB until I thought it looked ok (although she didn’t). I had to wind the colour temp way way down though, I think the ambient interior lighting, magnolia walls and the general brown or red decor in the house are making everything quite reddy.

She wants it to look ‘natural’ which is of course pretty much impossible since what constitutes natural is wildly dependent on the conditions of viewing and even the viewer (each of my eyes has a different cast, one sees things more blue the other one more red). However she just needs to be satisfied that it looks reasonably good, and the main theme is preserved. So a piece that features white looks white on screen.

Of course people’s screens vary, but not as much as we are seeing in the pictures themselves.

Any tips?

The easiest way is to have something of no colour in the frame (white/gray/black) and then take a reading from that in your photo manipulation software of choice for white balance.

I tried setting the WB on the camera that way, it was waaay off, even further than the auto setting.

Any chance of uploading a pic, or linking to a flikr so we can see whats wrong?

I could, but how would you know what the original scarf looks like?

Either hot lights (tungsten) or flash would be your best bet or failing that fluorescent but you need Philips graphilux tubes as they give a clean output with no spikes. Daylight incandescent bulbs are not worth it, better off to use ordinary incandescant/tungsten bulbs and correct the 3200°k to 5500°k with filters or in post
You need something to to diffuse the light

Flash is very blue and tungsten red though? Or are you talking about frequency distribution rather than peak output?

Good point. Do you have to use filters/PP or can you do it by setting WB on the camera? Although I have a feeling that’s not the same as adjusting the whole spectrum in PPis it?

I was still typing but hit post on iPad. The colour temperature isn’t that critical as long as the light has no big spikes in its chromatic output. A colour checker from gretag Macbeth would help when you process the Raws, you are shooting raw and not jpeg aren’t you?

That’s all true Mr Smith, but a little involved. A nicely diffused flash with WB set to flash will look like daylight. Bit too cold? Warm up the WB in camera. I’ve shot a fair amount of clothing for small boutiques (gloves, bags, dresses etc) and have just used two studio heads and smallish softboxes. A couple of speedlites would do the job too.

Edit – just make sure the flash is the main source of light if you go down this route. 1/250th to kill the ambient.

I tried setting the WB on the camera that way, it was waaay off, even further than the auto setting.

It would.

Take the pic in RAW mode with auto WB, it may well be wrong, it doesn’t matter. Upload the pic to your image edited program (if you don’t have one, I’m sure a free one will be available, though do make sure it can read your DSLRs RAW files). One click on a neutral area in the pic will wet the WB correctly 100% using the programs WB tool.

You can adjust WB in Jpegs, it just a little more complex and harder to explain.

How is it ‘involved’? It sounds like he doesn’t have access to a studio flash kit and sofboxes so a cheap way to do it is with tungsten lights and a way of diffusing them. Like taping white sheets to the walls or building a small light cube out of tracing paper. Then using a grey card/ colour card to check the colour when processing. The colour targets enable you to check any shifts in different colours and balance them accurately when you process the files.

you are shooting raw and not jpeg aren’t you?

Yes, but it’s too late to start faffing about with Photoshop tonight 🙂 (and I’m not very good at that).

She’s a perfectionist.. I doubt many people on Etsy will be going to such lengths to snap their stuff! The discussion has moved from perfect accuracy to just showing off the qualities of the fabric, which is more fun. I think we need fabric close-ups which would make the flash thing harder.

I might be able to get a second flash out of this project 🙂

Just pay a professional to do the job properly. 🙄

Lol yeah that’s right, I’m sure our budget stretches to pro photographers from the proceeds of half a dozen scarves on Etsy.

take the photos near a window in daylight

Why worry when most screens aren’t calibrated and the viewer is going to see crap colours anyway?

How is it ‘involved’?

The colour temperature isn’t that critical as long as the light has no big spikes in its chromatic output. A colour checker from gretag Macbeth would help

As you have so helpfully pointed out, this is a chap without access to studio kit, so it’s fairly safe to assume that the above will be double-dutch to him (no offence Moley).

But for the price of a decent speedlite, you can buy a twin head kit with brollies these days, which would solve the problem in hand, give the OP some new toys and also be useful for nice family pics afterwards.

In basic terms, light from different angles (minimizing any shadows). And Post-processing (or tinkering with the Jpeg settings in the camera at the very least, but on computer preferable for the best results). Shooting RAW gives you the most control.

Boosting contrast will help your colours stand out as much as boosting the colours themselves. Applying a little sharpening will help your overall image too.

I think we need fabric close-ups which would make the flash thing harder.

If you’re really serious have a look at things like ring flashes for macro…but you could quickly start spending a lot of money!

In the olden days, a lot of the output was determined by the input (i.e. film, filters, etc)…Nowadays (whilst the original execution is still very important), post processing plays a big part in photography. That’s just the way it is.

Buy a light booth from somewhere like Calumet(.com). You’ll get one for <£100

Edit: here you go… http://www.calumetphoto.co.uk/eng/product/lastolite_ephotomaker_kit_large/753-754c

I may not be an expert photographer, but I do know my black body radiation from my atomic emission 🙂 MrSmith’s post made good sense to me – thanks btw.

But for the price of a decent speedlite, you can buy a twin head kit with brollies these days

I think I know what you mean, but I doubt I’ll be able to stretch that far either.

Why worry when most screens aren’t calibrated and the viewer is going to see crap colours anyway?

The viewers’ screens will be a little bit out, whereas some of the original snaps looked a completely different colour altogether. And like I say, you can only be so accurate, we just don’t want the customer to go ‘oh, I wanted a GREEN scarf, this is BLUE’ when they open the package. I suppose we could add a note instructing the owner to only wear the scarf under artificial light.

MF that is cool, but probably too small to display the stuff nicely. Although I think we could probably rig something similar up using a sheet… hmm…

Have a look around – I’m sure you’ll get something suitable – that was just a 10 second search.

Edit – or search for tips on making a DIY one.

[/quote]Boosting contrast will help your colours stand out as much as boosting the colours themselves.

He wants accurate colour, not over saturated colours that look nothing like the product.
If you want to alter contrast without changing the saturation or hue use a curve in PS and change the mode to luminosity.

Light your subject with only one type of light source, not a mix.
Have something white in photo, place so that it can be cropped out if you like.
Take photo in RAW
Open image in photoshop, set white balance from white area.
Edit as normal.

Go outside and use daylight 😉

Check out the 101 sections here:
Strobist

Boosting contrast will help your colours stand out as much as boosting the colours themselves.

He wants accurate colour, not over saturated colours that look nothing like the product.

Which is what I was saying…

Can you not stick a white sheet on a garden table & just use daylight? Wait for an overcast day to avoid harsh shadows…you might need to fiddle with backdrops to get something that looks decent, but it should be do-able.

Either that or pin up a load of white sheets in the room you are doing the shooting in to get rid of all the colour casts it.sounds like you are getting…?

Bed sheet 2 halogen work lamps and your elected

I’m not a photographer, but I have done some messing about with cameras and deal with colour at work.

The first thing to get right is to get some decent lighting. You can look at two things under different lamps and see different colours – to they eye two things in poor lighting could look more or less bang on matching, but put them under a light box or spectro and you’ll find out that they’re nowhere near.

CFLs can be extremely lumpy in their output (ie if you actually measured the power at different wavelengths of light, you’d find that there are areas which are getting masses of power, and others that get very little. Our brain fills in the gaps and comes up with white).

If you split a cheap CFL light with a prism you pretty much get Red, Green and Blue, and you will never get decent images from that. What you want is a big halogen lamp and something white in the shot to take WB from. I would suggest reading this guide to bodging photography in the home:

http://www.dansdata.com/phototute.htm

Which is what I was saying…

But taking your advice and “boosting contrast” is going to change the colours. that’s why I suggested using a curve in luminosity mode which will not change the colours as much as ‘normal’ mode or using brightness/contrast ( assuming using photoshop)

shoot in a window, use reflectors to rid shadow, job done. manually set white balance before hand. decent fast lens and you’ll have plenty of light.

decent fast lens and you’ll have plenty of light.

Use a tripod and stop down for more depth of field.

I used to do the same as damo2576 – shoot in only natural light, with one reflector to fill in the shadows a bit.
My reflector was from ebay and cost about £10.

It’s fine.

Now I have a light tent, flash and reflector and it’s a bit better and less effected by clouds, etc.

Can you all see these? EDITED

Nope

But I can see this

You need to get the link with the .jpg in it

Yes, I can see those.
With the middle one, It’s obvious the white balance is off (the white paper is pink), but I’m not too sure it would solve the problem on its own.
If you are using a tripod, I would close the aperture to at least f8 so that focus is less critical.
I would also do one where the DoF is really narrow (if your camera allows). That could look really nice.

Something like this: (although this is faked and would look better if the right-hand end was also in focus).

Thanks Alex.

I should add that those are her efforts with her tiny compact, not mine. She’s coming round to the idea that I can help with my better camera at the weekend when I’m around, so that’s good.

There was an Olympus FL-36R on ebay last night going for £70.. second remote capable flash would have been cool… not got the money though 🙁

second remote capable flash would have been cool… not got the money though

Yep – same here. I keep wondering about those cheap chinese things (Yongnuo Yn-560).
The good thing about a studio environment, is you can take your time to manually expose. No fancy TTL or whatever is needed.
Currently I use a Vivitar 285HV with some cheap remote triggers and it’s fantastic.