White product on white background

[bioformx]

I have searched the forums but have had not luck with what I need help on. I am trying to take some product photos of small cosmetic containers floating on a white background. The problem is the cosmetics are also white containers. So when I take pictures and try to adjust the background to get a sold white the container washes out. I have tried everything from different settings to lighting to you name it. I am really a newbie to digital photography so any help is appreciated. I am using a light tent with some halogens (poor mans lighting) and a F828.

[PacAce]

What you need to do is illuminate the white background as well so that it doesn't come out as a gray background that you need to fix. If you use more light on the background than on the product, you'll be able to completely blow out the background so that unsightly seams, creases, and what-nots on the background are not visible.

[bioformx]

What you need to do is illuminate the white background as well so that it doesn't come out as a gray background that you need to fix. If you use more light on the background than on the product, you'll be able to completely blow out the background so that unsightly seams, creases, and what-nots on the background are not visible.

Leo,

First thanks for taking the time to respond. My major problem really seems to be that when I clean up my picture, part of my product becomes washed out. I am backlighting the fabric and have an acrylic bottom for a reflection. I have attatched a photo to demonstrate my problem. Any more suggestions is extremely helpful.

[PacAce]

Have you tried decreasing your exposure a little. If that doesn't help, then you might want to diffuse your lighting on the product a little more so that it doesn't leave such a hot spot on the product.

[bioformx]

I have reduced the exposer and everything else. It just seems that the lighting on the shoulder of the container gets overexposed while the rest stays fine. Maybe placement of the lighting?

[Sam]

I have reduced the exposer and everything else. It just seems that the lighting on the shoulder of the container gets overexposed while the rest stays fine. Maybe placement of the lighting?

I am no expert, what I would try though is moving the product away from the background so less light is bouncing back onto it. Not sure if that will make any sense but basically if your subject is 2' from the background try going to 5 or so and see if that makes a difference.

[PacAce]

I have reduced the exposer and everything else. It just seems that the lighting on the shoulder of the container gets overexposed while the rest stays fine. Maybe placement of the lighting?
Here's are two pictures that I took. I tried several different arrangements of my 3 flashes and this one came out the closest to what you are doing. The one on the left is the image straight out of the camera. The one on the right is after I edited the image.

As in your case, I also ended up with some problem reflections of the light source which blew out every time I tried to really whiten the background. So I ended up masking out the bottle and adjusting the background independently of the bottle itself.

I then adjusted the levels of the bottle to get it a little whiter than what came out of the camera. This made the cap bottle the same whiteness as the BG which made it blend with it, so I selected just the cap top and adjusted the level to just a tad darker than the BG.

The final touch was to soften the reflections on the bottle by duplicating the image and applying the healing tool on the reflections. I then adjusted the opacity of this layer to soften the reflection.

As for the lighting I used, I placed a flash behind and above the bottle as Slave C with EC of +2/3 over A. Group B was not used and Group A was the master on the camera.

[bioformx]

Hey Leo nice pictures I really appreciate that help alot! I need to probably make some adjustments to my lighting tohelp as well. What settings did you use by the way. Hey ever need any nutrition products let me know.

[PacAce]

Hey Leo nice pictures I really appreciate that help alot! I need to probably make some adjustments to my lighting tohelp as well. What settings did you use by the way. Hey ever need any nutrition products let me know.
Are you referring to the camera settings? Since I was using the flashes for my lighting, everything was pretty much automatic ETTL-II. The camera itself was set to M with aperture at f/11 and shutter at 1/250 although that particular shot was made with 1/160 (I must have unintentionally set it when I was trying to set something else, not that the shutter reallyt matters anyway. :confused: )

Oh, I forgot to mention in my previous post that the flash FEC was set to +1 2/3 to account for the predominantly white scene. And the master flash had a Lumiquest Ultrasoft Pocket Bouncer attached to it.

If you are going to be using the bright halogen lamps you might want to consider bouncing them off a white board or something similar to diffuse the light. That should help a lot to get rid of the big "hot spot" reflections on the bottle.

Good luck. :)

[chtgrubbs]

One very effective technique I use on glass or reflective white objects is to position a black card on each side of the object to put a black or grey reflection right on the edge of the object where it overlaps the white background. The exact position has to be determined by experimentation but it is usually to the side with the front edge of the card at a point 90 degrees to the camera lens, hence the card is to the rear of the object.