How do I take a picture with a completely white background?

[XtremeEngineering]

I have been trying to take some pictures of some products of mine on what paper although it still shows signs of grey in the background of the picture. How can I take the picture so it looks like its floating in air with a perfectly white background?

I was thinking of buying a few sheets of 110 brightness paper, currently I am using 87. Do you think this would make the differnce?

Any help is greatly appreciated!

Logan

 

[Soulreaver]

It is probably the fotometer that makes the white background grayish.
Just open one or two points to make the background white.

 

[Goofup]

Use a gray-scale card?

 

[Sharkbait]

Yeah, sounds like you need to adjust the white balance. The camera is seeing white and interpreting that as a slight grey. If you can do a custom white balance, you can use a grey card for that...

 

[XtremeEngineering]

Alright thanks but on a Digital Camera, how would I go about doing this?

 

[molested_cow]

Check this out:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=8773&highlight=porsche

Well, ideally you use a light box and then use photoshop to get rid of the ground plane.

 

[drlynn]

You could try overexposing by 2 stops from your meter reading. Set your exposure compensation to +2, or if you have manual control you can adjust the aperture and/or shutter to get an overexposure.

The problem, as stated earlier, is that your camera's meter is designed to read the overall scene as midle gray. With a white background the meter has to compensate by 2 stops to turn it gray. What you have to do is take those 2 stops back by overexposing.

 

[mavrik]

Add more light - try doubling the light you're using - see if it helps.

 

[Mr Fish]

As several people here have already said, for white objects such as snow you will need to overexpose by 2 stops. This is because the camera tries to set the overall picture level as mid gray.

Just remember when you look at the scene try and decide if the overall light level is equivalent to a mid gray (this is roughly the brightness level of green grass). If it is darker then under expose and if it is brighter then over expose.

Using a grey card at the time of taking the photo can help (take a spo meter reading).

Alternatively if you want to you can fix it quite well in photoshop by going to IMAGE>ADJUSTMENTS>LEVELS and using the set white point (the right of the three pipettes) and clicking on the area on the photo you wish to be white.