help - dark photos

Hi, I am new here. bought my first dslr - a canon t2. been working a project of shooting bar drinks. started with a glass of red wine. the photos all look brown.

I have set up a white backdrop with white foam board on both sides to bounce the light
around. i have been using some 3200 k tungston lights. the shots i have taken in "full auto" look nice and white on the lcd screen however after the shot - flash off- the result is a brown cast. When I put the shot in photoshop, i can remove the cast by using auto color anbd auto contrast.

why are these shots looking brown?

I have tried the man setting and they still do not appear as white as i would like. i have also changed the white balance from auto to tungston and even tried a custom white balance.

Are you shooting Raw or Jpeg?

jpeg. i have tried raw with no improvement.

The improvement won't be in the RAW images, rather your ability to fix them as a result of your shooting them in RAW. I am guessing that your post processing attempts might be the issue, as much as anything. I see that you used "auto color" and "auto contrast". You will have a lot more control if you are not allowing the computer to "auto" anything. There are a variety of tools in photoshop that you can try, "adjust color cast" is one of them. I am not a photoshop expert in any way, but there are many people here who are. My point is that you should be able to resurrect these photos much more than you seem to have done, if you have shot them in RAW and have the software to post process them properly. Hopefully, someone here will step up to help. Can you post a pic or two? That might help to identify the issue.

trying to give a quick post with my problem, i have added an avatar of the shot in question.

take a picture of one of the white boards without flash and use that to set the manual white balance, should get you in the ballpark

I tried the custom white balance by shooting a pic of the white board, the shot looked green.

Your having a white balance problem looking at your avatar. Two things you can do.
1. easiest way is to shoot raw an adjust the color temperature in DPP. It's a couple second adjustment.
2. In camera adjust the white balance. As you have a white background, you can use that to set it.

How about a sample?

After taking the green shot did you go into the menu and set that as the custom white balance? 2nd red camera menu after the 2 video menus
http://vimeo.com/97424​11

I had some problems taking photos in front of a white object, here's my tips.

First, white balance is key if you're shooting JPG. I highly recommend shooting in RAW, which you can change later but JPG is cool, just get the white balance set up first. Take a photo a near white item, usually I like to use in a pinch a sheet of 8x11 paper. It's easier if the white paper is larger, then take a photo, from your camera set it as a custom white balance.

I'm not sure in your camera how to set it but it's very simple. Just select the custom white balance function and then select the image you just took, then in the camera select custom white balance for your photos. Take a test photo and your shots should be the same color as your subject, no strange tints appearing. As for the gray of off color back ground, this could be an exposure tuning. I like to take a few test shots as I'm taking photos and keep the camera in manual mode.

I personally prefer manual mode when shooting a still life subject because as long as I'm taking the same photo, the image will not change. Sometimes in auto mode the camera gets mixed up and will change settings, giving you a strange vary between shots. Also I like to start with my strobes at their lowest setting and work up, there's a more technical method but honestly I don't know it and prefer to get the shot right by viewing the LCD results. (I'm a cheater)

Here's a result using the method explained above taking a photo of some skateboard wheels. Done with two cheapy strobes and 48" umbrellas.

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

i set the custom white balance and that resulted in the green shot.

This is where shooting raw shines. Just take the pics in raw and worry about exposure, focus, framing, and composition. When shooting raw WB is irrelevant as it can be set to any value afterward with ease. In DPP (or your raw converter of choice) adjust the WB until it's perfect, then convert to jpeg.

bulldogg7 wrote in post #9943363
take a picture of one of the white boards without flash and use that to set the manual white balance, should get you in the ballpark

assuming the "no flash" shot would also mean no extra lighting?

whatever lighting you're shooting in
Photobucket is pretty easy and free to register and post a sample. Someone could probably figure out your problem, I'm still learning myself.