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The Dark Room -- Photo Editing and Picture Taking. Advice, tutorials, questions on all things photoshop, photo editing, and taking pictures of beads or glass.

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  #1  
Old 2012-05-15, 8:39am
shirts shirts is offline
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Default Light bulbs

Would love to know people's input on what type of light bulbs they use in their photo set up. I make a lightbox and then lit it from left and right sides and on top with 60W soft white tungsten bulbs. I used my handheld light metre to get the proper exposure, set my white balance on the camera to "tungsten", but I still find the pictures to have a very strong yellow cast... I just came back from the store and have both Compact Fluorescent "daylight" bulbs (at the equivalent of 100W - a bonus for these expensive bulbs!) and a tungsten bulb (GE Reveal 60W). I am unsure what to set the white balance at with these bulbs, but will play around to see what works best.
My hope is to have the light set up consistent which will make the editing a breeze. Would love to know what other people have had success with.
Thanks so much,
Annie.
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  #2  
Old 2012-05-15, 5:34pm
Mike Jordan Mike Jordan is offline
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Just about any light will work... it just depends on what look you are going for. Also, it depends on your camera and if it is digital and has the ability to do color balancing with. I've shot pictures with very strong color casts and still gotten normal pictures by doing a color balance of the light. Most digital cameras have the ability to set your color balance to neutral, but you need something to set it against. Even a white cloth, white piece of paper, white coffee filter, etc., can be used to set color balance pretty close. If I'm shooting in tricky light (I've shot in barns where the light came from several different light sources and still obtained neutral color balance) I try to get a shot with something white in it. Then I use that white to do a color balance in the computer. If you have a single source of light, regardless of the type, it's a lot easier to obtain color balance. While some of the built in settings that some cameras have will work, for best color balance you need a neutral calibration source. I have several that have gray, white and black areas that I use to set color balance, but a all white area will work fine. You don't want to use reflective white (like glossy paint) and some papers look white but they have bleach in them that shows up different to a digital camera. White cloth is better because it doesn't reflect as much so you get a nice even white source.

If you don't know how to set color balance with your camera, you will go a long ways towards getting good images if you learn how.

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Old 2012-05-15, 5:53pm
Alaska Alaska is offline
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The color temperature of the light source is mostly unimportant. That is provided your camera or image processing software can compensate. The important point is that it is best to use light that is of one color temperature. Mixing daylight with tungsten can cause some interesting issues.

On this end, use the RAW format and always include a gray card. That way with one simple click in PhotoShop the image is color corrected.

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Old 2012-05-16, 5:07pm
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Hmm... Both very interesting tips. I am going to have to search through the DSLR settings some more and try out what you both mentioned. Thanks so much!!
Annie.
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Old 2012-05-17, 6:44am
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Dale M. Dale M. is offline
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IF you want to get somewhat exotic with lighting there are special photography color correct bulbs available. Believe the are 5300° kelvin and are supposed to be correctly balanced for sunlight... But as others have mentioned knowing how to use white balance in camera will take a lot of the guess work out of getting colors correct....

Also your energy saver bulbs are "florescent" and will probably give pics a blue/green cast as opposes to yellow/brown tone of tungsten.. If you want to pursue this lighting thing more search out bulbs and "color temperature" and do some reading...

Came across this while refreshing my memory of color temperature of "sunlight/neutral" bulbs...

http://www.perr.com/white_balance.html

Dale
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Last edited by Dale M.; 2012-05-27 at 6:58am.
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Old 2012-05-26, 7:05am
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Alaska View Post
The color temperature of the light source is mostly unimportant. That is provided your camera or image processing software can compensate. The important point is that it is best to use light that is of one color temperature. Mixing daylight with tungsten can cause some interesting issues.

On this end, use the RAW format and always include a gray card. That way with one simple click in PhotoShop the image is color corrected.

+1
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Old 2012-06-06, 6:15am
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If you shoot in raw it's fairly straight forward to color correct I post processing also if you can avoid using per set white balance by programming it yourself. I am a Nikon shooter and in my camera I use Pre for white balance. After I select Pre I just point the camers at the subject and press the shutter. If all goes well the display will read GOOD if for some reason it didn't work it will read No Good. If I get the No Good I repeat the process I would guess I get the good reading about 99 percent of the time.
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