Reluctant Photographer
TPF Noob!
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2020
- Messages
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I'm trying to take some halfway decent pictures for eBay and so far it's not going very well.
I need colorful product images that stand out against a bright white background. I started off using a white table in the corner of two off white walls with a cheap daylight LED softbox light on either side. I used my phone to take pictures. This setup worked alright, except for the yellowish-white walls that sometimes looked too yellow.
So I "upgraded" to a three-sided homemade photo box. I painted three pieces of plywood white and built a half-cube (bottom and two sides), which I then placed in the corner on top of the table. This actually made my pictures worse: now they're way too dull, and all the colors are washed out.
I tried playing with exposure settings, but this didn't help much. It just made the images lighter or darker. I need high contrast and saturation, and I obviously don't know how to achieve this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Most YouTube tutorials make it seem like lights + background = point-and-shoot success, but that hasn't been my experience. Not trying to make great art here, I just want something less heinously incompetent than the average eBay picture. I'd like to take a large number of pictures as efficiently as possible, so the simpler the workflow the better.
Sorry to use my first post for a noob question, but it's where I'm at. If anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong that would be extremely helpful. Bonus points if you word your response so that even a total idiot can easily follow what you're saying.
I need colorful product images that stand out against a bright white background. I started off using a white table in the corner of two off white walls with a cheap daylight LED softbox light on either side. I used my phone to take pictures. This setup worked alright, except for the yellowish-white walls that sometimes looked too yellow.
So I "upgraded" to a three-sided homemade photo box. I painted three pieces of plywood white and built a half-cube (bottom and two sides), which I then placed in the corner on top of the table. This actually made my pictures worse: now they're way too dull, and all the colors are washed out.
I tried playing with exposure settings, but this didn't help much. It just made the images lighter or darker. I need high contrast and saturation, and I obviously don't know how to achieve this.
Any help would be greatly appreciated. Most YouTube tutorials make it seem like lights + background = point-and-shoot success, but that hasn't been my experience. Not trying to make great art here, I just want something less heinously incompetent than the average eBay picture. I'd like to take a large number of pictures as efficiently as possible, so the simpler the workflow the better.
Sorry to use my first post for a noob question, but it's where I'm at. If anyone can tell me what I'm doing wrong that would be extremely helpful. Bonus points if you word your response so that even a total idiot can easily follow what you're saying.