Lighting/color issues

[james__12345]

I am starting a website to sell paracord bracelets, keychains, etc. Obviously, my product pictures are going to be very important to the site. I work in a cabinet shop, so I took a scrap piece of counter top and made a platform with two sides on it to take my pictures on, for a consistant background for all the shots. The color I picked out shows all my colors pretty well, but I'm having a slight problem. The problem I'm having, is different pics are coming out different colors, even with exactly the same lighting. I tried it with just the room light, but the color didnt show enough. I tried using the flash, but the flash changed the paracord colors way too much. I then took a desk lamp and tried lighting with that, but i'm getting two different shades of pictures. One shade is great, but the other has the stone looking background a redish tint, and throwing all the colors off. The camera is on a tripod, and I'm using the self timer, so that there's no movement to blur the pictures. It seems like the items with blue in them, tend to lead to the redish tent the most frequently. I'm using a nikon coolpics 5600 (thats the best camera I have access to). Does anyone have any idea what I can do differently (and cheaply) to get a consistant and accurate color?

 

[WesternGuy]

Are you talking about the colour you get on a monitor or a print from the photo? Other thought - this sounds to me, with the limited information you have supplied that it is possibly a white balance problem - don't know - just trying to make a guess or two. There may be other reasons for the colour differences as well. Let us know where you are seeing the colour differences first.

Cheers,

WesternGuy

 

[clanthar]

Sounds like white balance. Check the camera WB setting. Odds are it's set to auto white balance. Auto white balance doesn't work. You'll want to set the WB to match the light. If the camera permits, setting a custom WB in this case would be ideal.

Joe

 

[james__12345]

Westernguy, I am talking about the color on a monitor. These pics will never be printed, they are strictly for online use. I'm sorry for the limited info, photography really isn't my thing, so I didn't really know what all I needed to give.

Clanthar, I just checked, and the camera is set to auto white balance. Sounds like that should solve my problem.

Thank you both very much. I will update once I try the shots with the whitebalance set differently, but for now I gotta go, because a couple of my pieces are being delivered to local customers in about twenty mins, and I really want to get pictures of them before they're gone. Thanks again.

 

[WesternGuy]

james_12345, if the white balance does not fully help your situation, then my next question is whether or not you are working with a calibrated monitor. Unless your monitor is calibrated, there is no guarantee that what you see is what you got...let us know if the WB helps. I always like to know when a particular problem is resolved and how it was resolved. Thanks.

WesternGuy

 

[james__12345]

The white balance did solve the problem. The color may not be exactly right, but all the pictures are now coming out the same color. The preset for incandescent has my colors almost perfect with the way I'm lighting them. Thanks for all the help.