Thread: Photo Light Box

I did a little research on your camera, and it looks like the problem is the auto white balance. This isn't uncommon I know that many cameras struggle with AWB when there is low light, or artificial light. If you don't want to use the custom white balance you might want to try the tungsten preset.

"White-balance is more miss than hit with this camera. A custom white-balance setting is provided for accuracy. It takes longer but avoids the problems that plague AWB. Under artificial light, white-balance leaves a noticeable yellow-cast, particularly with scenes of few colors."

With this in mind I would use the custom white balance and I'm sure you will be fine.

Originally Posted by jerryjtr

I did a little research on your camera, and it looks like the problem is the auto white balance. This isn't uncommon I know that many cameras struggle with AWB when there is low light, or artificial light. If you don't want to use the custom white balance you might want to try the tungsten preset.

"White-balance is more miss than hit with this camera. A custom white-balance setting is provided for accuracy. It takes longer but avoids the problems that plague AWB. Under artificial light, white-balance leaves a noticeable yellow-cast, particularly with scenes of few colors."

With this in mind I would use the custom white balance and I'm sure you will be fine.

Thanks, I've seen it before. When you take the camera out of Auto mode, you can adjust the white balance....I'll give that a shot...All in All, I'm pretty happy with it. I'd recommend to someone...

Yeah, I get those yellow photos all the time, white balance gives me fits. If I remember right, florescent bulbs put out true white light, so if you use those in your standing lamps your pics might turn out right. I think that's what I did when I was using a light box and wanted to use the "auto" setting.

Originally Posted by Pete_S

Yeah, I get those yellow photos all the time, white balance gives me fits. If I remember right, florescent bulbs put out true white light, so if you use those in your standing lamps your pics might turn out right. I think that's what I did when I was using a light box and wanted to use the "auto" setting.

I can only assume that critical color isn't the goal here, and so this is true enough; however, to get the best rendition you really should use custom white balance.

Normal fluorescent lights give off a green cast that needs a magenta filter to correct.

Daylight fluorescents have the magenta filter built in, and so they come pre balanced. There is a lot of disparity between brands, and some tend to look blue, other's look less green.

Once you get used to it setting the white balance is fast, and easy on most cameras. It beats using gels, and filters to correct your light by far.

+1 on what jerryjtr says about normal flourescent bulbs - while they are OK for B&W photography they are a nightmare for colour. Not only does it not reproduce a balanced light spectrum, some tubes can't even be compensated for with correction filters as they produce spectra of varying intensity. Stay away from strip and tube lights.

Regards,
Neil

I'd never claim to know much of anything about photography, but I'm pretty sure I got much better results with those bulb type fluorescents shining on the light box I was using, at least compared to having incandescents in the close lamps. There were incandescents in the room, and the fluorescents were shining through white fabric, so maybe that helped. Frankly, my photo standards were (are) quite low, all I wanted was a pic that fairly accurately reflected what I was selling with the least amount of headache.

Originally Posted by Pete_S

I'd never claim to know much of anything about photography, but I'm pretty sure I got much better results with those bulb type fluorescents shining on the light box I was using, at least compared to having incandescents in the close lamps. There were incandescents in the room, and the fluorescents were shining through white fabric, so maybe that helped. Frankly, my photo standards were (are) quite low, all I wanted was a pic that fairly accurately reflected what I was selling with the least amount of headache.

Are you using the same camera? Some cameras do better at AWB in artificial light than others. zib's camera is known to have a hard time in this situation, and so custom white balance will solve the problem. It's likely that changing lamps will not fix the problem for a camera known to have issues with artificial light.

Originally Posted by jerryjtr

Are you using the same camera? Some cameras do better at AWB in artificial light than others. zib's camera is known to have a hard time in this situation, and so custom white balance will solve the problem. It's likely that changing lamps will not fix the problem for a camera known to have issues with artificial light.

No, now that I think about it, it was probably one that was worse. Much worse. Old kodak point and shoot, I don't think it even had custom white balance, just presets. You couldn't take any kind of picture indoors with that damn thing. I'd forgotten thats why I had to go to all that trouble with the lamps-to force a decent picture out of it if I needed to take pics at night.

But I don't want to give bad advice, so unless there are fluorescents handy in the house I wouldn't recommend going to the trouble of buying them and testing it.

Originally Posted by zib

Here's the deal. I have a light box. I use two goose neck desk lamps with daylight Incan bulbs, (The blue ones) On the top, I have a work light, with a 100w daylight bulb in it.
All the opening are covered with Muslin fabric...I've experimented with the light through the fabric, and then shining right in the box directly, which seems to work better. The pics are still yellow, lucky for me, Windows fixes it. As Neil suggested, I may try the flash. I just dont' see that much of a difference with the box. More experiments I guess...

It takes practice and as the others have said with the color, that's a "white balance" issue. If your camera has the option for RAW just shoot using it and correct the white balance in processing.

I don't have a light box, I just you an off camera 430 and/or 580EX and set the product on a white poster board and use the flashes to blow out the highlights.

For example...





I just ordered my first new straight so when I get it I will take some shots and post the set up I used to accomplish the final image.

Scott......your speedlite costs more than my camera. LOL

Great razor thin DOF on your flash photo.