Photography Lighting

MPJ

MPJ

New member
I\'m having serious photography issues, mostly with lighting.

I\'ve read all the photography articles on the site and am trying to follow them to my best but my pictures are always coming out dark and greenish-yellow. I have been somewhat-successfully able to adjust them afterwards with software but overall this is a bit to much editing and I am losing color and detail on the mini.

My painting area looks as follows:

pa_cleanup_1.jpg


Those two lamps have 60w daylight bulbs in them and I bring them down to within 12\" or so of the minis. I have another hand held lamp with another of the same bulb that I use when taking pictures but it doesn\'t seem to make a difference. I\'m using a tripod for my camera which is a Canon PowerShot A620.

With my latest picture I\'ve used a piece of very pale blue broadcloth draped over something and took the picture of the minis on/in front of it but it still came out greenish yellow, with software I adjusted the white correction and now the background looks white. Many of my other minis (espically my scenery) with a plain background was taken in front of white foamcore and if you browse my gallery you can see that they all have a green or yellow tinge to them and that\'s after correction (but before I learned about \'white correction\').

I do photograph in my basement which is quite underlit (thus the two lamps for painting) and I don\'t really know how to work my camera all that well (other than macro mode, turn flash off and focus).

Do I need stronger lightbulbs (the lamps will take up to 75w but the next higher daylight bulbs I can find are 100w)? Seems other photographers get satisfying results with 60w. Is there some settings on the camera that will make it do better (sounds annoying to have to set it every time but hey, what the heck)? Am I missing something entirely?

Thanks in advance.
 
Orb

Orb

procrastinator
Question 1: what is the \"white balance\" set to on the camera. Seems your camera has the following WB settings;
• Auto
• Daylight
• Cloudy
• Tungsten
• Fluorescent
• Fluorescent H
• Custom

It\'s probably on Auto, but try some of the others

A 60W daylight bulb, if it\'s the round blue coated one one I used to use, it\'s still a tungsten bulb with a just a coating and I believe some of the yellow/orange colour cast of the tungsten can still show through.

Also, is there a main room light on in the room when you take the pics.......if it\'s tungsten, it will still get into the picture.

just some things to ponder.
 
P

phael_minis

New member
Persennaly I use no light and take my pictures on a sunny day, so there are less shadow effects.
I use an old Nikon Coolpix, without flash, on a tripos, on anmonochromatic background, Then I use photoshop to chabge the background.
Hope it helps
 
D

DrEvilmonki

Active member
ok I don\'t know your camera but most will have similar features.
You need to make sure you are not in automatic mode. You will need to change your settings for the type of light.
There should be an options menu which allows you to choose what type of light you are using - daylight, flouro, incandescent etc.
Basically you need to try all the different options, take a sries of photos changing only the lighting option until you get one you like.
There should also be an exposure setting for under and over exposing. Again try a series of photos to get a good result.

I tend to take about 8 photos per side for my figures (no film so no cost other than time).

Also make sure you use the self time function. Even on a tripod you can get vibration if you are touching it.

Check your manual, it will tell you the fastest way to choose those functions.

Hope that helps:)

EDIT: what orb said! :D
 
Orb

Orb

procrastinator
The A620 has six white balance presets (daylight, cloudy, tungsten, fluorescent, fluorescent H and underwater) in addition to the default auto white balance. There is also a \'custom\' white balance setting, which allows you to point the camera at a white or gray object and set the white balance manually. The custom white balance setting is remembered even if you turn the camera off. In normal outdoor shooting the auto white balance works perfectly (as confirmed by our studio tests). Indoors it\'s a bit more hit and miss, as we\'ve seen with most Canon PowerShots, fluorescent lighting doesn\'t cause much of a problem, whereas incandescent (tungsten) lighting causes a fairly strong orange color cast. Best to stick to the preset (or one-push custom WB) or the tungsten preset if you want more neutral colors.
Click to expand...

that was a quote from DPReview about your camera, and it sounds like the orange caste is from the \"daylight\" tungsten bulbs. If you buy the low wattage fluorescent daylight bulbs it will be more successful.
 
MPJ

MPJ

New member
All good info, thanks. Sad that the techno-geek of yesterday (OK, 10 years ago) is the techno-pheeb of today.

I\'m playing with the WB settings in the camera and I found the auto timer thingie. I\'ve tried the sunny day thing but that seems to knock out my highlights, something to do with painting indoors and photographing outdoors I was told (then there\'s the whole it\'s about to get bitterly cold around here for the next few months thing).

Question about bulbs: When I bought the lamps and bulbs a few months ago I looked at those twisty low wattage flourescent things but was told by the guy at the shop that they take 20+ minutes to \'warm up\' and get to full brightness, this gave me pause because I didn\'t want to fire up my lamps 20min before starting a painting session (espically where these days I\'m lucky to get 20min to paint). Is that warm up thingie true, and if so is it noticeable? Also is 20w enough with one of those (that seems to be the common bright wattage with them)?
 
airhead

airhead

Coffin Dodger / Keymaster
Try the Halogen A bulbs.

Also, my photo work went way up when I went to a photo tent. (link to a home-made version in my sig - but you can buy them for about $20 on ebay if you are patient - some of them charge that much for shipping so be careful.

Set your camera on a tripod and set the exposure for the longest time it will allow. (generally about 1/4 second) This narrows the aperature and increases the depth of field.
 
Orb

Orb

procrastinator
Originally posted by MPJ
Question about bulbs: When I bought the lamps and bulbs a few months ago I looked at those twisty low wattage flourescent things but was told by the guy at the shop that they take 20+ minutes to \'warm up\' and get to full brightness, this gave me pause because I didn\'t want to fire up my lamps 20min before starting a painting session (espically where these days I\'m lucky to get 20min to paint). Is that warm up thingie true, and if so is it noticeable? Also is 20w enough with one of those (that seems to be the common bright wattage with them)?
Click to expand...

From my experience; If there is a warm up time, it\'s barely noticable. I\'ll have to pay more attention next time and see if I can see anything.
20W is equivelent to 100W in a normal tungsten bulb. It\'s bright enough, again from my experience. + it\'s cheaper to run, doesn\'t get so hot.....
 
W

War Griffon

New member
The only lamps/bulbs I have ever come across that need a warm up time are the low energy houshold bulbs and I wouldn\'t even entertain using these for photography.

When first switched on they are quite dim and require about 10 to 20 minutes to warm up to full brightness.
 
lahatiel

lahatiel

New member
I use twisty-style low-wattage compact flourescent bulbs, rated as full-spectrum daylight replacements, and am quite happy with them. Like Orb, I\'ve never experienced any warm-up time being necessary.

I also back Airhead\'s light-box/light-tent suggestion. Making your own is fairly cheap and easy and the link in his .sig is extremely useful. In the end, though, I\'m fundamentally lazy so I broke down and just bought one off eBay. Do watch the shipping prices carefully if you go that route, but I won one with an very low minimum bid and way-higher-than-necessary shipping and still came out paying just $18 total.
 
MPJ

MPJ

New member
Sorry, but now lightbulbs have me more confused than ever.

From what I\'m reading there are multiple \'types\' of twisty-style low-wattage fluorescent bulbs? The ones that warm up and the ones that don\'t. How do I know which I\'m getting? Was at the supermarket today looking at the flourescent bulbs there and it was little to no help. At the office supply place they seemed to indicate they all took warm up time.
 
H

hakoMike

Active member
I have found that a couple incandescent \"daylight\" bulbs, a 12\" fluorsescent light and a 12\" cubic light tent (I ebayed mine from amvona.com) make for good pics. I adjust the midrange color up a bit and increase the gamma slightly after the fact.
 
MPJ

MPJ

New member
Well, didn\'t change lightbulbs yet but I have mucked around with the camera\'s settings and manually set the white balance before shooting. I also used a 2 second delay to give my hands time to clear the camera and I came up with this quality:

img45232dbb2bf45.jpg


Overall much better than before but still not great. This photo has not been retouched at all with software (except for cropping and joining obviously). Next I will look for better bulbs I think and try for a photobooth. My first pic from indoors where I didn\'t feel I \'needed\' to retouch the colours.
 
MPJ

MPJ

New member
Actually I\'m fairly pleased with these pics, these are improvements after taking some of the advice from this thread. :) Still a touch dark though, that cloth is about two shades lighter than it looks.

Guess I can\'t blame the few stray hairs on the camera. :drunk:
 
S

spazzy

New member
Originally posted by MPJ
...This photo has not been retouched at all with software (except for cropping and joining obviously). ...
Click to expand...

I have a question of my own here. What program do you use? I have had a difficult time getting pics joined together with the program that came with the Cannon I use.
 
D

demonherald

New member
photoshop is what most people are using ..I have also tried a few Free softwares..One I found really easy to use was SERIF Photo Plus just do a google search for it and it\'s a free download..
 
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