Looks like I shot through Earl Grey

[mikerault]

Using a light box with 2-500 watt halogen lights I have set the camera to the incandecent temperature range (about 2500 degrees) and manually adjusted the exposure to f/11 at 1/30 second and used a tripod. The shots turn out looking like thery were shot through Earl Grey tea, rather yellow to brown tinged. Unless I really over expose I can't get it to white. I am shooting against white foam board.

If I adjust the levels in photoshop everything pops into what it should be. This is with raw or jpeg.

Anyone have any suggestions how to get the results I want (whites to be white) out of the camera?

Shooting with a Canon20D, canon 50mm 1.8 or Canon 17X85mm 4.0 lens

Mike

[silvrr]

You will have to overexpose quite a bit go get your whites to be "white" Double check your white balance to ensure its correct and then keep overexposing until you get the highlights flashing in your LCD after the shot. This can be a bit tricky if you have shiny or metallic objects but light placement and bouncing will help with that.

This shot was taken using a single strobe above the lenses through an umbrella at 1/2 power.

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2439/3918083890_8af138cbcb_b.jpg

It was 90% of the way there in camera and just brought the blacks back and made sure the background was 100% white in photoshop.

Hope that helps.

[mikerault]

Ok, so overexposed it is...here is a shot out of the camera and the same one after just leveling with exposure correct and temp at 3500.

[silvrr]

Looks better. You will get better results if you get further in camera. If you get it close in camera then in photoshop you can use the eyedropper in levels or curves and use the white eyedropper to change the background to 100% white. If the in camera shot is not close enough using this technique will cause unwanted results.

If your going to be doing a lot of these you might want to make a small light box. Helps get nice even lighting and reduce shadows.

See this thread
http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=281524&highlight=Lightbox

[dsvilko]

Two things come to mind. First, shoot the empty background any use that photo to set the custom WB (things will be much easier if the WB is spot-on right from the camera). Secondly, to get a pure white background without overexposing the subject you could put the subject on a glass plate some distance above the white background and light the white background separately (small OCF?) with about +2EV higher intensity.