uuuugghh product photography

[Franca]

Hi there fellow photo enthusiasts! I am another amateur photographer trying to DIY their own product photographs… So, I apologize in advance if anyone feels like they are have deja vu...

Shooting with a Pentax K-r and 55 mm lens

Shooting soft home décor items – like throw pillows (18 x 18”) on a white paper background. Shooting manual F8 – I think the shutter speeds are at about 1/30. I am setting the exposure on a grey card and manual white balance off the background. Upon importing the images - the background is white balanced – maybe a tad grey, but nothing a little PP can’t fix…the products still seem a little short on contrast – I am propping the objects up about 1 foot away from the back drop. I actually don’t mind light shadows and a visible backdrop – I am sort of going for natural “sunny” look with definite dimension and a sense of the color and material.

The biggest issue is the color of the objects seems WAY off. I bought this set:
Interfit Super Cool-lite 4 55 Two-Head Fluorescent Kit
Interfit Super Cool-lite 4 55 Two-Head Fluorescent Kit INT293

And am locating each light about 45 degrees on either side of the product about 3 feet away with one of them aimed more at the background.

The bulbs supposedly have a CRI rating of 95 –and I am dubious about trying a bunch of other (expensive) bulbs only to come to the same conclusion.

So, aside from wishing I had purhcased tungsten hot lights or something else….I am welcoming any suggestions on technique or equipment to consider how I might dig myself out of this mess….

Budget is an issue, unfortunately….but I am willing to listen to suggestions...

Should I switch to tungsten?
I am considering a monolight? And using the CFLs to light the backdrop or overall lighting? But, I have never shot with flash….can the two be mixed? I’ve heard that I could also potentially use the monolight to augment natural (also indoor) lighting…which could be a plus.

Ughhhhh, a little overwhelmed! Any help would be so, so appreciated!

 

[Propsguy]

You shouldn't need to switch to tungsten to get accurate color in your subjects, but you must not mix light sources of different color temperature because you can not resolve that in post processing.

First off, make sure your monitor is calibrated or all of your efforts will be in vein. Second, shoot in RAW mode so you can tweak the color temp accurately in post. Third, throwing a strobe (monolight) into the mix is not going to solve the problem at this point. All you need to do right now is solve the color temperature issue, So...

Turn off all the lights and black out the windows... ALL the lights, including ambient room lights... make the room totally dark....
Turn on one of your continuous lights and set it up the way you want it to light the subject... take a test photo at the rated color temp of that light and see how it looks. If it looks good, move on... If not, tweak the color temp in camera until it looks awesome.
Turn on the other continuous light and set it up the you want it to light the subject... turn off the first continuous light and take a test photo at the same color temp that you took the first test photo... compare the photos and make sure they are identical in temp... If not, gel the second light until it matches the first. If yes, move on....
Repeat as necessary until all your lights are identical color temperature... working one light at a time.
Turn on all your lights... tweak the levels and placements of each light as needed, and shoot away....

 

[Franca]

Thanks very much for the reply Propsguy.
I am shooting RAW, in a large totally dark room with no other lighting. There are two lights in total.
Not shooting tethered - just moving the photos over and looking at them as I go and working in Bridge.
Monitor Calibration seems like a good idea.
I've been using bridge to look at the exposure and the color balance and do any pp there before moving the image into photoshop.

When you say change the temperature inside the camera... I think the only way for me to do that in my camera is working in the manual white balance function and moving the color temperature – in this case towards the yellow/orange as the products have a blueish cast and all the browns and reds look flat and cold. Initially, I did try to do it that way, but the white background looks…..not white.

I didn’t know that you could add gels to Continious CFL set-ups – I will look into that. If you have any links or book recommendations, I’d be interested in learning more…
Thanks again for your response!

 

[Big Mike]

Welcome to the forum.

Something seems a little weird.
You set a custom white balance off of the background, and the background looks good (or close to it), but the objects themselves don't look right....is that what you are saying? If one (either background or subject) is coming out correct, then the other 'should' be correct as well.

As mentioned, the first thing you need to do is calibrate your monitor. If you aren't very sure that your monitor is correct, you might as be doing this blindfolded.
ColorMunki
Spyder Colorimeters For Monitor Display Calibration and Software - Datacolor Imaging Solutions

Also, I'd suggest setting a custom white balance with your grey card or a colour balance target.
Just because something looks white to our eyes, does not mean that it's truly colour neutral.

Once you find a WB setting that works and/or a WB adjustment in Adobe Camera Raw, you should be able to apply those same settings to every other shot.

 

[Franca]

Welcome to the forum.

Something seems a little weird.
You set a custom white balance off of the background, and the background looks good (or close to it), but the objects themselves don't look right....is that what you are saying?
.

Thank you! And Thanks so much for taking the time to respond!
Yes – that is exactly the problem.

What I did was to set up the two lights 45 degrees off to either side of where the product would go. Set the exposure with a grey card.

Then, I custom set the white balance – the Pentax K-R allows you to snap the shutter in Manual WB mode on a white background with your desired lighting and set the white balance. I snap a pic of the white background and import it into Bridge. I use the eye dropper tool in Bridge – without clicking to look at the balance of RGB and looking at the Histogram – they were all equal, so I thought I was good to go…..I setup my product fluff all the corners and snap away.

Once shot and in Bridge I had to adjust the exposure a little – again looking at the histogram and the image for that matter. If I move the color temperature in Bridge towards a more favorable temperature for the product the background looks off - any of the oranges, reds and rusty-browns look a little flat, definitely cool or just totally off.

I will calibrate my monitor – although I will say I have looked at the images on a few different monitors and I would say the images have the same problem to varying degrees. Thanks for those links, I will try that and see if it helps.

My first assumption was that it is the temperature of the CFLs themselves - as the colors I am having problems with are in the orange-red spectrum. I also seem to remember reading something in another thread about a low shutter speed potentially causing a problem with CFLs? I am shooting at 1/30. And I thought that since it is recommended to shoot with three lights or more in product photography, maybe I am still not dealing with enough light? The ISO is set to 200 BTW, so maybe bumping it up to 400 could help with the shutter speed?

 

[Big Mike]

Then, I custom set the white balance – the Pentax K-R allows you to snap the shutter in Manual WB mode on a white background with your desired lighting and set the white balance. I snap a pic of the white background and import it into Bridge. I use the eye dropper tool in Bridge – without clicking to look at the balance of RGB and looking at the Histogram – they were all equal, so I thought I was good to go…..I setup my product fluff all the corners and snap away.

Once shot and in Bridge I had to adjust the exposure a little – again looking at the histogram and the image for that matter. If I move the color temperature in Bridge towards a more favorable temperature for the product the background looks off - any of the oranges, reds and rusty-browns look a little flat, definitely cool or just totally off.

It sounds like you are getting the WB correct, but then you are using the WB setting to adjust the colors of the photo to your taste...and that is what is throwing everything off.
WB is a global adjustment, so if you change it, even a little bit, it affects the whole image.

I haven't used bridge or ACR in a long time, I very much prefer Lightroom...but they should be fairly similar. What I would do in Lightroom, is adjust the specific color channel/range. There are 8 different color channels (iirc) and you can adjust the Hue, Saturation or Luminance of each one separately.

So rather than adjusting your WB to tweak the color, adjust the specific colors that you want to.

Also, be sure to adjust your exposure first, then color.