Weird color issues

[Mercius]

I have been getting a lot of feedback lately on my miniatures that my highlights are not high enough...while this is undoubtably true, my highlights are coming across in the photos I take much less bright and "poppy" as they do in the hand. For instance, at the moment I am working on a dwarf slayer. I basecoated his hair and beard with a deep crimson, then highlighted up to a bright orange and cream mix in about 7 different layers. In the hand the hair really pops out at you when you look at the mini, just like a slayer's hair should....however when I photo the slayer his hair looks deep red, with a slight highlight of a brighter red. I can't see any orange in the hair at all, it is as if it vanished...when I showed my wife the pictures she was amazed at how much variation there wa between the miniature and the photos.
So my prediciment is, what causes this, is it a camera issue? Is it an issue with my lighting?
I am wondering if it has anything to do with the lighting because when I take pictures outside in the sun, the hair still shows up and 1-3 different shades of red, with no orange. Is it a camera issue? is there some unknown setting that needs to be tweaked? I am using a Canon Rebel XT DS126071 which I brought brand new 2 years ago, it is an SLR and is supposed to be a very nice camera, granted I am a complete noob with cameras. If you guys could offer any insight or help I would be much appreciative as I feel that my painting is MUCH better than my photos are showing off. Thanks in advance and have a great day!

 

[Jericho]

Would you mind taking a picture of your photo area including the lights etc? Lights make a huge difference. If your your area has bad lighting then it won't be casting the full spectrum of light onto your subject, and then it can't reflect all colors back properly. Your eyes are way better at adjusting to this naturally than most cameras or software are. Quality of lighting is a big deal.

I recently had to upgrade a bunch of the lights in my apartment to full spectrum because they were so damn orange it was driving me crazy. Even with full spectrum and/or day light lamps, having ambient light being one color or another really messes up color balance in a hurry. I was sucking like 40-50% of the yellow out of my images to get them back to normal, and often shifting a lot of the red over to blue as well. Pain in the ass it was ... not so much any more!

 

[Mercius]

I have inadequate lighting, of that I have no doubts...the thing is, even outside in daylight the color is off, I have taken pictures in various light sources and can't get it to work. It has been suggested that perhaps my white balance is off in the camera, so I am goign to check that...my lighting set up is abyssmal though lol.

 

[Jericho]

I'm not totally familiar with the Rebel's system but yeah there should be a ton of white balance settings. You can either choose the automatic setting or simply match the settings to your light setup (fluorescent, tungsten, etc.).

 

[Chern Ann]

Most modern digital cameras have a white balance setting, which is typically adjusted by taking a sheet of white paper and photographing it in the same light conditions as the miniature. This will then compensate somewhat for inadequate lighting or lights that aren't perfectly white. Check your manual.

 

[Mercius]

Thank you all...I am slowly working the kinks out...will try the white balance thing later tonight.

 

[SaintHax]

In addition to your WB being off, if the light itself is too far from white, that will change the image quality even if the WB is being set correctly. Normal incadescents are so orage that you'll lose some distinction between some shades of orange and reds.

 

[Tommie Soule]

i take all my photos in a dark room (not a photographers one tho), lights out. i have a pure white desk top lamp (black) from argos(£17.99).
i have the lamp about 6" from the subject at an angle of about 45 degrees.
my camera kodak fine pix thing not sure about model munber, but it's cheap. on macro setting.
i always zoom i a litte as opposed to putting the camera closer, gives me better perspective.
then snap.

 

[jefcully]

Whenever I photograph the cuff, they give a horrible blue / gray tint to images. I set the white balance first and there are three lamps 100 watt light bulbs around the viewer.