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10/04/2006 07:22:25 AM · #1 |
Please please can some one help me on lighting. It̢۪s clearly one of my main problems, how can I get lighting right when the only thing I have are table lamps and the manual flash on my camera. I just don̢۪t understand how the lighting in some shots gets so even and wonderful I mean my light always looks orange and ugly :( has any one got any ideas one something that could maybe improve my lighting a bit?
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10/04/2006 07:31:40 AM · #2 |
I also work with table lamps. They don't have enough grunt for studio portraiture etc, but for still lifes of smallish items I find them adequate. I mainly use one free-standing reading lamp that has multiple heads that can be adjusted independently. I find with this I can usually get the lighting as I want it (eliminate shadows, highlight backdrop etc). As for avoiding the ugly orange cast to your shots it's a matter of correctly adjusting the white balance in camera (if you're shooting in JPEG) or making the adjustments in PP (if you shoot in RAW). I very rarely use on camera flash. I prefer to use just the reading lights and use a long shutter speed if required. Needless to say, I always use a tripod for these sorts of shots.
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10/04/2006 07:35:23 AM · #3 |
| As above - Tripod and White balance... |
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10/04/2006 07:48:17 AM · #4 |
yeah.. ok nice answers but there are problems :) I havent got a tripod yet and I don't have að clue how to make white balance work :D
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10/04/2006 07:56:26 AM · #5 |
Three answers for your WB woes:
1) Your camera has a Tungsten setting, just change the WB to Tungsten and that should quickly take care of the orange issues.
2) For even better results, get a gray card at any camera store. Hold it where your subject is (hold it in the light) and take a picture of it. Then set your camera to Custom White Balance and use that picture as the reference for the WB.
3) For best results, do the same thing with the gray card, but shoot in raw. Then in the raw converter (software), use your White Balance tool and click on the gray card. Suddenly everything is perfectly balanced. :-)
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10/04/2006 07:58:51 AM · #6 |
Originally posted by Krisby:
yeah.. ok nice answers but there are problems :) I havent got a tripod yet and I don't have að clue how to make white balance work :D |
Don't have my camera with me right now, but it's the button on the back saying "WB". Push it, and you will se a table of icons, top left is "automatic", works fine in most cases. Second one is "sunlight". Others are for cloudy weather, for shots in the shadow, for fluorescent (that is neon) light, the one with the bulb is for - you already know it. Before I had an external flash (don't ever use the on-board flash of your XT) and a studio umbrella, I lightened my shots with a reading lamp too, it had a soft white cover, makes soft shadows. If i want to highlight parts of the setup i use a small mirror or a flashlight. Definitely you should get a tripod to enable longer exposure, the XT isn't so heavy, a 25$ tripod will do for a beginning.
Edited for some of the typos.
Message edited by author 2006-10-04 08:00:37.
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10/04/2006 08:50:21 AM · #7 |
White balance explained well
If you want to be a better photographer then you'll have to understand a few things, white balance being one of them. You eye can adjust automatically - white looks white all the time, but the camera can't do as agood a job. So you need to learn about the color of light - daylight and flash are about the same, depending on the time of day. Shade is a tad blue, and the color of daylight can change during the day - sunset is quite golden in color. Flourescent lights are green and regular bulbs are red in comparison.
Mixing light types (flash and desk lamp) will ALWAYS create issues. You might be able to custom WB and get decent results, but there will be a color cast as the direction and ratio of the different lights change. Changing your shutter speed will also change the ratio of ambient to flash, changing the WB and color cast.
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10/04/2006 09:25:12 AM · #8 |
and DO invest in a tripod. . .motion blur is only artsy if you do it on purpose.
:o)
if you don't have the cash, try to experiment and improvise using tabletops, books, etc. you'd be amazed how much better everything looks. |
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10/04/2006 09:45:24 AM · #9 |
Originally posted by dwterry:
Three answers for your WB woes:
3) For best results, do the same thing with the gray card, but shoot in raw. Then in the raw converter (software), use your White Balance tool and click on the gray card. Suddenly everything is perfectly balanced. :-) |
In my 300D manual, it says says take a picture of something white, like a piece of paper under the light. This has been working wonderfully for me. Should I get a gray card for better results?
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10/04/2006 09:54:04 AM · #10 |
| I think WB is something i gotta work on too. thanks for the link! |
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10/04/2006 10:20:14 AM · #11 |
Originally posted by jfriesen:
In my 300D manual, it says says take a picture of something white, like a piece of paper under the light. This has been working wonderfully for me. Should I get a gray card for better results? |
For the purpose of setting white balance, anything neutral in color will do, as long as you don't over or under expose it.
For setting exposure, an 18% gray card is useful. Since I might want to set exposure too... I just make it a gray card rather than a white one.
There's a reflector that I've seen and considered buying on many occasions. It has, on the back of it, a black square, a white square and a gray square. With those three things, you can pretty much get perfect exposures and white balance at the same time.
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10/04/2006 10:34:55 AM · #12 |
Originally posted by Prof_Fate:
Mixing light types (flash and desk lamp) will ALWAYS create issues. You might be able to custom WB and get decent results, but there will be a color cast as the direction and ratio of the different lights change. Changing your shutter speed will also change the ratio of ambient to flash, changing the WB and color cast. |
A way to solve issues with mixing lights is to 'gel' your flash head, in other words, you apply a piece of colored plastic to your flash to make it the same color tempereature as your other light (e.g., desk lamp). Then set your WB to tungsten (if your desk lamp is a tungsten lamp) to get rid of the color casts of both lamps.
Hope this helps. |
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10/04/2006 10:39:32 AM · #13 |
Originally posted by dwterry:
Originally posted by jfriesen:
In my 300D manual, it says says take a picture of something white, like a piece of paper under the light. This has been working wonderfully for me. Should I get a gray card for better results? |
For the purpose of setting white balance, anything neutral in color will do, as long as you don't over or under expose it.
For setting exposure, an 18% gray card is useful. Since I might want to set exposure too... I just make it a gray card rather than a white one.
There's a reflector that I've seen and considered buying on many occasions. It has, on the back of it, a black square, a white square and a gray square. With those three things, you can pretty much get perfect exposures and white balance at the same time. |
I highly recommend any one of the 'calibration targets' that are on the market today. As you said, they ususally include a black, gray, and white stripes or boxes. I recently learned that an 18% gray card is great for exposure, but the color may not be as neutral as you expect. The calibration targets are 18% gray in the gray area AND color balanced. I started using one and it made a dramatic difference in my exposure and white balance settings. I cannot even begin to tell you how much time this has saved when importing RAW images. Outside the camera and a lens, this is the single most important tool in my kit right now.
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10/04/2006 11:04:28 AM · #14 |
So what are you trying to shoot, do you have an example of the ugly light. I can offer a few tips for portraits with minimal lighting, but I have no idea if that would even be helpful.
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10/04/2006 11:16:28 AM · #15 |
| I don't wanna hijack dwterry's thread but I'd like to get a few tips for portraits with minimal lighting. A friend of mine is pregnant and she wants me to take pictures of her. I was thinking black and white with a really simple light setup (I have 1 SB600 and the light from a window has light sources). So any tip for portraits with simple lighting would be welcome! |
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10/04/2006 11:27:11 AM · #16 |
Like others camera users, I manually adjust my white balance on my camera. To do that I use a white sheet.
If I'm not satisfied with the result I adjust white balance with adobe camera raw.
Like you I don't have a set of lights so when I do interior shoot my main lightning source is my external flash unit. This work very well for me by using the bounce flash technique as you can see on these pics :
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