Help! How do I get more light on my beads for pics?
 

I have a photo cube and three 27 watt (equiv to 100 watt) compact fluorescent lights - one on each side and one on top, but my pics still seem SO dark. I have tried making some adjustments to the light in my software, but it does not make the pics look better.

Here is what I mean

unedited pic:

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...dhi/bead5u.jpg

adjusted for sharpness and contrast:

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...dhi/bead5s.jpg

It's still not a very good pic - it seems grainy and still a little dark. How do I get more light in my pics???

here are a couple of other pics I have edited:

http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...dhi/bead14.jpg


http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l1...dhi/bead18.jpg

That is as big as I can make them and have them still look halfway decent. Are they big enough to use to sell them?

Do you have a tripod? If you use a tripod for the camera, you can leave the shutter open longer and not have any shake in your image.

Just thought - what setting are you using on your camera? Manual or Automatic?

yes, I have a tripod - I am using automatic settings for Macro photography. My camera will do higher resolution but not in a macro setting apparently - it keeps defaulting to "Hi" res when I switch it to macro even though I have it set to "fine" *which is better).

I read somewhere once about using Exposure compensation when you shoot with lights, but I can't find where I read it and I don't remember what setting I should use.

Put a white reflector on one side and move the light from that side over to the other side so you have two on the same side. Put your white reflector right up next to the beads just outside of where you will see it once you crop. Play with the angle until you get the max amount of reflection back from it onto the beads.

White cardboard works very well and gives a smother reflection than something shiny like aluminum foil or a mirror would. If you take two pieces of white cardboard and put the edges together with tape, you can adjust them so they stand by themself or you can put a tab on the back side like a cardboard picture frame to stand it up.

Mike

Good idea - I will try that :)

Your pics are 90000% better than mine. :(

Started a post last night and managed to delete before posting.

So yes, you could us a reflector for more light. Since you have a photo cube that cuts glare you could try using either tin foil or bright white cardboard. You could also add light to the set up - up the effective wattage on your bulbs. Just change all the bulbs to the same thing.

With a tripod, you could leave the shutter open longer, which allows the camera to get more light to the sensor.

Also see what kind of results you can get out of normal mode instead of macro. On many digital cameras, you don't need to use the macro and might get sharper looking photos with the normal setting.

Also, once you get more light, you might want to check your ISO. A lower ISO reduces grain, but it takes more light to get good pictures with a lower ISO.

Hope that's clear!

The problem is not the lighting. Even though more intense lights will give you more options that will help you solve other problems i.e.. blur and depth of field.

The problem is the limitation with light meters when it comes to white back grounds. Unless your camera has a spot meter that can focus only on the bead. The cameras meter will be fooled into thinking that the white should be grey and under expose the image. If you have ever photographed a snow covered landscape and had all of your photos come out under exposed this is the reason.

The solution is exposure compensation. Two ways to achieve this would be with the exposure compensation setting in the camera or shooting in manual mode. Either way what you will need to do is open up the exposure around a stop and a half above what the meter is telling you it should be. Depending on your meter possibly up to three stops. You'll have to experiment to find the right compensation .

Scott

Hmmm, exposure compensation will only help if the camera has enough light.

I made the call because of the grain of the images that there wasn't enough light.

I could be wrong, it's happened before :cool:. To find out -- look at the settings the camera used to take the image (usually under image info or Exif info in menus). If it's something like 1/30, f4, ISO 400, you need to up the light or get a tripod before playing with exposure compensation. If it is more like 1/200, f11, ISO 200, you need to start playing with the exposure settings manually.

If any of that doesn't make sense, tell me. :)

I like your beads!:) All I did was set the white point for the background.

Parisgal, your absolutely right the problem is under exposure. But its because the meters reading is wrong and needs to be compensated.

Lets say the lights are not that bright and the meter is giving you a reading of F/4 at 1/30. You will still need to compensate for the meter by opening the aperture or increasing the time of the exposure.

It really does not matter how bright the light is if your meter is fooled by the amount of white in the image. Take the example of the snowy landscape which is lit by the sun. The same thing applies.

Like Keven's samples show once the white point is set properly every thing falls into place. And exposure compensations is really just setting the white point in the camera.

Scott

And to increase the time of exposure, you're going to need a tripod (generally, some photographers manage to hand hold down to 1/15 of a second, but they are doing it all day every day). If you open up the aperture at this point, you're going to have an even shallower depth of field.

So, if you're getting a reading of F4 at 1/30 a second, you need to add more light or a tripod so that you have the room to play with your exposure compensations (unless you want camera shake or very short depth of field).

So is that plus or minus on the exposure compensation? :) I can change that setting on my camera so thought I would try that.

You might also want to use the timer. Just touching the camera will make it blurry.

OK, those do look better (and thanks for the compliment!) - what software are you using? I think I may need to get something better than what I have, which is just what came with the camera.

Light and Glare
 

I don't want to change the subject but add one more degree of difficulty if I may. The responses are really good, and most of us could use some photography help. But it almost makes my head spin to think about changing from auto settings to manual and trying to figure out exposure compensation. My lighting is set up similarly to squid's and although I can correct many issues with my photo program although I'd rather not do too much to any picture. I can't get rid of the glare, even if I take pictures outside, back to the sun or in shade or cloudcover. Inside I tilt the lights up and away from the inside of the cube and certain beads just don't want to give up the glare.
What Kevan did made the pictures look a lot better, but there is still that little glare spot. Maybe I'm too much of a "glass glare" perfectionist! Here's one I tried to do yesterday and I never could get the glare reflection off the frit inside or outside. It seemed like the more I corrected for the lighting the worse the glare got. Anyone have some suggestions for that? Must I surrender and learn how to use my camera?:-({|=



Kathy

The shooting data on that first pic that I posted unedited and edited was:

1/568 sec- F/2.8, but the sensitivty is "auto" - I assume that is the ISO?

Oh one other thing - the background is a gray to white gradient - is that good, bad, indifferent?

I have a really good tripod :)

will do :)

Yup, that means it decided on the ISO on the fly. To have more control you might want to set it to 200. It might also be a preference that you lose control of in Macro mode.

1/568 is a strange setting but fast. So you've got room to play with your current set up.

I'd put the camera into manual and set the F stop to F4 or a larger number - the larger the number the more of the depth of the image that will be in focus.

Then I'd take a whole series of images starting with 1/400 of a second every step on down to 1/60. Then I'd open the images in a paint program and see which starts off at pretty close to having the white background white, while maintaining the details in the bead. That setting will be pretty close to what works for you set up with most beads (as long as nothing gets moved).

Then head off to white balance in your photo program and make further adjustments. That should give you a much cleaner image to start with.

Now she says that :-) With a good tripod you can leave that in place and go down to 1/20 without a shutter release. But you probably won't need to.

Just needs to be taken into account. If you set your "white point" to a darker gray part of your background, the details in your highlights will disappear. But as long as the grey is neutral it won't affect color balance.

Minus will make your images darker, plus will make them lighter. So in this case, plus.

Squid, you would want to go in the plus direction.

Kathy don't be afraid of the manual mode. Personally I'm afraid of the auto modes :biggrin: Just set up your shot do one exposure where the meter tells you to shoot. Then open up ( plus ) the exposure by half a stop and take another shot. Continue this process until you've taking about five or six images of increasingly brighter exposures. Down load all of the image and see which one worked the best. And don't worry how they look in the cameras screen wait until their on your computer to judge them. Remember we're talking about compensating for sets with a hugh amount of white.

As far as glare goes. Round non etched glass is just impossibly to shoot with out showing a high or refection of the light source. All you can do is find a trade off you can live with and accept that glass is glass. Spend time looking at others work and notice the things you like and dislike about the way it was lit.
The key to figuring out how it was lit. Is to look closely at the high lights, shadows, reflections and how hard or soft the light is ( Contrast ).

Here is a link to my Levels tutorial if you want to know how Keven set the white points.
http://www.lampworketc.com/forums/sh...ad.php?t=11879
Scott

All I can say is that exposure compensation really is pretty easy, then you don't have to touch manual settings. Or you could get an 18% grey background and shoot on that. That is the color that camera assumes it sees, so it makes correct assumptions when light metering. But then your background is not white.

Then I may have misunderstood the box, or you may need a box that diffuses light more. Glare happens when a light source is reflected. The more intense the light source, the more glare. The more diffuse the light source the less glare. Outside and back to the sun are going to be less optimal choices for shooting in this case. You want the lights to go through the translucent walls of the box.

The Exposure compensation on my camera is very easy to set.

thanks!

What is the color temperature of the lights you're using? Also, what is the camera?

I shamed myslef to go and set up a similar situation, in my photocube, notwithstanding glare, to figure out the manual settings.

Thanks for the comment, parisgal, on wanting to have the lights "go through the translucent walls of the box. That's a good visual.

So, if the inside of my lightbox is reading 1/800 and the camera is set on F4 and 400ISO, that's probably way too fast? I'm not sure what it has been in the past but without the information on, on the camera, I had no idea it was so bright. So, I'm needing to go more on the minus side?

Thanks Scott, I'll do the experiment you suggested and check out the tutorial.

I'm sorry I jumped in on this squid. I hope I didn't distract you from getting the answer to your problem. Thank you all for that great input.
Kathy

I am using the daylight (5500K) lights and a Nikon Coolpix 4300.