Help taking indoor photos of products with the Canon T3i

[vexious]

Hey everyone,

Ok so I just bought the Canon T3i with 18-55mm lens.

Im going to be helping my father take pictures of some rugs indoors (fluorescent lights, and it's not that bright inside even with all the lights on). I'm new and have never owned a high-tech camera, what is some good advise / settings for taking pictures of rugs? Most are pretty big, and obviously color accuracy is HUGE concern as you don't want to misrepresent.

Flash / No Flash? Should I buy an external flash? Buy spotlights?

ISO? I've read to keep it around 100, but the photos are dark without flash.

Shutter speed? I have a tripod, I want to capture as much color and detail as possible.

What setting should I put the Dial? M? P? Full auto?


Also if I was to take the rugs outside would that be better? Any setting differences? (Some will be possible to do this some not)

All the help I can get to help my father out would be great!

 

[MLeeK]

External flashes. 2 of them, off camera.
We can't tell you settings, it's done by metering the light you are working in.
You could put it in aperture priority at about f/3.5 (NO ZOOM); ISO 1600 and hope that's enough. You may will need a higher ISO than even that. Put it on the tripod and use the 10 second delay.

 

[vexious]

External flashes. 2 of them, off camera.
We can't tell you settings, it's done by metering the light you are working in.
You could put it in aperture priority at about f/3.5 (NO ZOOM); ISO 1600 and hope that's enough. You may will need a higher ISO than even that. Put it on the tripod and use the 10 second delay.

Thanks for your help, every little bit helps

Could you recommend a flash? Don't want to spend TOO much money on it though. Should I also do the White Balance set feature?

Cheers!

 

[Big Mike]

I think you could get away without buying flashes...but the key will be using light that is even. How are you shooting these rugs? On the floor, on a rack? You want them to be evenly lit and you probably want the camera to be perpendicular to them. So if on the floor, you want to be directly above them, shooting down.
Besides being evenly lit, you want the light to be all the same type...so don't use florescent and also have it close to a window etc.

Camera on a tripod would be good.

Ideally, I'd suggest that you actually learn how to control your camera, but for something like this, you could just put the camera into an auto mode (not the full auto green box mode). Use P or better yet, Av. In Av, set the aperture to F8 and the ISO to 100 (it's OK to use higher when the camera is not on a tripod). Take the photo...if it's too dark, adjust your Exposure Compensation (EC). This is cause the camera to use a slower shutter speed to get a brighter exposure...so that's why it's important to be using the tripod.