Help with lighting and white balance

[clarnibass]

Hi

First a disclaimer... I'm not a photographer. I bought a decent camera and lens mainly to get better photos of musical instruments for my website, instead of my cheap P&S camera.

I have two questions.

1) About the white balance. I just started experimenting with shooting RAW and editing with software (DPP... don't have Photoshop). I tried some of the WB options and some look better to me than others, but I'm not sure. The original from the camera (I think it was on Auto WB) I don't think looks as good as some of the others. The main issue is a weird colour sort of reflecting on the white background. The saxophone keys themsevles do look correct with the original camera photo, but I'll sacrifice that for a more balanced look. I think possibly the 5800K option looks best but I'm not sure. Really just started looking into WB to see what it changes.

2) About the light. I don't have any lights I can use except the natural light from the porch. When I took these I guess it wasn't the best time of day, with a bit too harsh light from one side making very it uneven. Maybe I can try waiting for softer light and put the instrument in the porch itself? Or maybe just softer lights and that's fine since I can use long expousre with the camera on a "tripod"? I'd like to get a more even light. I'm not expecting anything close to perfect, especially with such a subject... I don't have a flash other than the built-in which I find make photos like these look worse. So I'd like to improve with what I have, can't buy lights, flash, etc.

Not sure if it's important to mention but using AV, photos were way too dark, even if I used Spot Metering directly on the saxophone. I used M mode with F/8 (I think... some photos were f/5.6) and 1/8 speed. I think it was over exposed by at least 1.

Flickr resized my photos and they look a bit worse, less sharp, etc. but WB comparison look ok. all photos shot in RAW, then DPP automatically puts them on sharpness 3 so I left it that way (seems to be standard and if I move to 0 it brings it back to 3 next time). No editing other than resizing and the WB differences.

Original http://www.flickr.com/photos/5372800...in/photostream
Shade http://www.flickr.com/photos/5372800...in/photostream
Cloudy http://www.flickr.com/photos/5372800...in/photostream
Flash http://www.flickr.com/photos/5372800...in/photostream
5800K http://www.flickr.com/photos/5372800...in/photostream

I'm leaning towards the 5800K looking best, though I see a very small difference between that, the Cloudy and also the Flash. BTW I'm colourblind which might affect the way I see it (or anything really).

Here a couple of photos of the setup (if you can call it that).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/5372800...in/photostream
http://www.flickr.com/photos/5372800...in/photostream

Thank you!

 

[Derrel]

I looked through them all...I thought the CLoudy shot looked acceptable. When photographing a large, polished metal object placed directly onto a white paper background, it is normal for there to be at least "some" color in the reflection off of polished metal...that's almost unavoidable at times. With such a large percentage of the frame being white, OVER-exposing by one f/stop or one full shutter speed from the meter's baseline reading makes perfect, normal sense. Even more than 1.0 EV of over-exposure might be necessary, at times. Depends. Whatever it takes.

 

[clarnibass]

Thanks!

I'm not that worried about some colour reflecting into the white background, just it looked worse with too much of it in the photo with Auto camera WB. Some suggested to do a custom WB. I think if I shoot RAW (which I will for this type of photos) I can just choose the WB in the software and it's the same thing, no? Am I also right that using the K amount WB is basically the same as all the others (i.e. each is just a certain K)? Then I could simply choose that option and the K amount that looks best to me, right?

As far as the lighting, I was thinking first maybe wait for a better time of day. This had pretty harsh strong noon-afternoon light as you can see on the saxophone bow (the curved part on the right end). I tried all directions of the saxophone and for that photo this direction worked best. I thought instead of have it lying on the floor, maybe put a longer white background like bristol on the rails (see camera_setup1) so it is on both the rails and the floor on the porch, then stand the instrument, leaning it on the rails. If that means anything, the sun is coming out exactly from the direction of that porch. Maybe early morning or some time before sun down would give better indirect light and with instrument standing lke that I would get less shadows on the background?

I did use an exposure much more than the camera would "want", even using spot metering on the instrument itself.

While I'm at it, any recommendation on what f and distance to use (if it matters)? I think even f/5 (which this photo is) would definitely have enough DOF. But since I can use a slow shutter speed I can choose any, maybe there are advantages I didn't consider.

Thanks again