Yellow Pictures

[cruiser56]

I have a DReb and take pictures of football cards for sale. I use a tripod and a Sigma lense with a macro. When i get it all set up and take pictures they look really good on the preview of the camera. But when i open them up in Adobe photo they have like a yellow sheen to them. If I use the auto adjust it seems to fix it but I was wondering what I might be doing wrong. Thank you

[WestFalcon]

Sounds like your light source was incandescent...light bulbs.....try using window light, I've done that before(not direct sun though)

[cruiser56]

Yes it was a light bulb. would a flourecent bulb work better. I do this in my office down stairs no windows.

[TomC]

Maybe change your WB settings to adjust. Either incandescent or even custom wb.

[cruiser56]

The other concern was why would it look good on the preview of the camera?

[TomC]

The other concern was why would it look good on the preview of the camera?
I think the general rule is to not use the preview to adjudicate color balance. Mainly sharpness, composition, histogram, etc. Remember, its a small LCD screen that isnt color balanced or anything. JMO

[J Rabin]

As other poster note: Incandescent tungsten bulbs give yellow light. Set WB to tungsten or shoot RAW and adjust.
J

[dsze]

Don't use the LCD preview for anything except composition and exposure via the Histogram. You could get yourself into trouble if you start relying on it for color, sharpness, etc. Its just not good enough to give you an accurate picture of the file in those respects.

Your images are yellow, most likely, because of the incorrect white balance as others have already noted. If your set up is fairly static and usually under the same conditions, I would set the custom white balance to be more accurate. Oh wait, remind me, does the Rebel allow you to set a custom WB in Kelvin? I can't remember if mine did that before the Hack or not. If not, get the hack, and then play with the Kelvin Temp. until you get a more true WB in your images. :)

-daniel

[RichardtheSane]

If you want the white balance ot be spot on read up on Custom WB - this gives superb results!

[EXA1a]

I have a DReb and take pictures of football cards for sale. I use a tripod and a Sigma lense with a macro.
Why don't you use a cheap flatbed scanner?

[RichardtheSane]

You'll get much higher resolution using the Dreb and a macro lens - even if it is not a 1:1 macro

[ron chappel]

custom white ballance is easy once you know how and which buttons to press and gives superb results
The other options are setting the preset white ballance to The little round lightbulb symbol
or doing an instant colour correction in photoshop elements

[Jon]

You'll get much higher resolution using the Dreb and a macro lens - even if it is not a 1:1 macro
Most cheap scanners these days do a pure 1200 dpi, and get that up to 4800 dpi via s/w interpolation. If the cards are biger than 2" x 3", he'll get higher resolution from the scanner.

[phili1]

Use the new floresent bulbs, they are rated for daylight. The one's that swirl like a cone. Or shoot raw and use temp to adjust. Incadesent is rated for 3400 kelvin.

[LarryB]

Perhaps I am missing something here.

Are you saying that you are copying these football cards and then offering them up for sale as your product? :confused:

[dsze]

Larry, I think he's taking photos of them as advertisement.

Where are you in Indiana?

-daniel

[LarryB]

Daniel,

I guess I'm still confused. Are they his cards? By "his", I mean does he hold the copyright?

I'm right in the middle of the state....west side of Indy. You?

[dsze]

Larry,

I don't know for sure, but I'm making the assumption that he owns these cards and is photographing them so that he can post ads online, like on ebay or something. I may be wrong, but that was my understanding.

I'm about 1.5 hours north of Indy on a lake near Indiana Beach. I don't live on the lake that Indiana Beach is on, but the connected lake just south of it.

-daniel

[Jon]

Use the new floresent bulbs, they are rated for daylight. The one's that swirl like a cone. Or shoot raw and use temp to adjust. Incadesent is rated for 3400 kelvin.
Incandescent can be anywhere from maybe 2600-3600 K, depending on the wattage and the coating of the lamp. And even the new "daylight" fluorescents are going to be a problem to color-balance since, like all fluorescents, they produce a discontinuous spectrum. Improved over earlier versions, but still discontinuous.

[phili1]

Jon your talking about house lamps. Photographic bulbs unless they have changed them were rated at 3200 & 3400 K. Of coarse I have not done allot of non flash in years.

[dsze]

....actually, if we're talking about true compact Flouro's, then you can buy them in several different, very specific, temps. For example, I have several different temps over my reef tank that come on at different times to simulate sunrise, mid-day, and sunset. :)

....just play with the custom WB or shoot RAW and adjust later.

-daniel

[Jon]

Photofloods come in "A" (3200K) and "B" (3400K) versions (corresponding to photoflood and film designations); but an unqualified "incandescent" leaves the door wide open. Fluorescents are balanced to "look" like daylight to the eye; most of them will have frequency gaps or peaks which will show up as hard-to-correct colour casts; with these, as with mercury- or sodium-vapour gas-discharge lamps, proper filtration and a little prayer are the safest bets.

[dsze]

Jon,

I may not be entirely correct, but true CF bulbs and MH bulbs do produce what I would consider a consistent spectrum of light. Corals require specific spectrums and hobbyists spend hundreds of dollars on corals, so given that these bulbs are able to sustain this life, I would have to think that they are fairly stable in the light they output. Standard house bulbs or even the home-CF screw in types are, as you say, no good.

-daniel

[Jon]

If I may rephrase, corals require light in specific frequency ranges. What happens outside those specific bands (or even whether the output's at a consistent level throughout those bands) is anybody's guess. They're getting better, but the filters on your camera's sensor aren't, I suspect, broad-band and don't collect all frequencies in the visible spectrum. If the fluorescents have gaps where your camera's expectimg light, you're going to have a hard-to-correct mess. I wouldn't rely on any kind of gas-discharge lighting for correctable colour work without extensive testing on all kinds of materials (To throw another variable in, many materials don't reflect all wavelengths "consistently", even if they appear to be the same colour. A classic example is vegetation's "anomalous" high reflectance of IR radiation, used as a means of quantifying and classifying plant health and species).

[Adam Hicks]

I have to agree with the scanner idea. Why on earth would you use a digital camera when a scanner WILL get a higher resolution, spot on color reproduction of your subject? Plus you can line them all up in a consistent method which a Photoshop Action or batch process could split them up and save them as separate files - and then you've taken care of about 9-12 cards at a time.

Adam