Close-Up Product Shots

[fuzzatonic]

I am shooting close up shots of yarn for my wife's business. True color is very important, but I would also like to get a subtle background, white, if possible.

My current equipment is a Canon G3 digital camera, two Smith-Victor 150W tungsten lights, and a Red Wing cocoon shooting tent . Any suggestions on tips I can use. The shots I am taking now are just not that crisp and the background is always gray, even though I am shooting on a pure white background. I have played with the custom white balance, aperture, and light metering, but I have just not been happy with the results.

Any suggestions on camera or set up would be greatly appreciated.

[PacAce]

fuzzatonic wrote:
I am shooting close up shots of yarn for my wife's business. True color is very important, but I would also like to get a subtle background, white, if possible.

My current equipment is a Canon G3 digital camera, two Smith-Victor 150W tungsten lights, and a Red Wing cocoon shooting tent . Any suggestions on tips I can use. The shots I am taking now are just not that crisp and the background is always gray, even though I am shooting on a pure white background. I have played with the custom white balance, aperture, and light metering, but I have just not been happy with the results.

Any suggestions on camera or set up would be greatly appreciated.

Your white background is gray because the exposure meter is set to assume that everything is a neutral gray. In order to get the white you want, you need to over expose your picture by a stop or more. If you're not shooting in Manual mode, then you need to use the exosure compensation feature to achieve the results you want.

For the pictures you've already taken, you can use Photoshop (or any other photo editing program) to adjust the level of the pictures so that the grays come out white again.

If you are getting a color cast from your lighting, you can use the white eyedropper in the "levels" panel (in Photoshop) to correct it. Just touch the white background with it, that's assuming the background really IS white.

The easiest way to make corrections after the fact is to shoot a couple of frames with a reference card in the picture. The reference card can be as simple as card with a white and a black patch on it or one with white, neutral gray, black and a few reference color patches. You would then use these reference colors to make your corrections and then apply the same correction values to the other shots assuming nothing was changed in the lighting or exposure after the reference shots were taken.

Good luck!