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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 2008-01-04, 9:08pm
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Default GE Reveal Light Bulbs, Photo Tents, & White Balance?

Happy New Year, all.

Is anyone using GE Reveal bulbs in their photos, by chance? With a photo tent/cube? I'm wondering if I should set my camera on incandescent or sunlight for this bulb. Gee, I should probably just do an experiment instead of asking.
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Old 2008-01-07, 9:40am
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won't cost you anything to experiment.
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Old 2008-01-27, 11:04am
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Default My Experiment Results

I am way overdue posting the results of my tiny experiment, but here they are.

Camera: Nikon Coolpix 200
Tent: Item # 120130513475 from Discountbulbs on eBay
Lights: 2 GE Reveal 120W bulbs in the cheap clamp on fixtures from Home Depot placed to the side of the item

** No photoshopping other than cropping was done to these images**

Photo #1: Automatic WB setting


Photo #2: Daylight WB setting


Photo #3: Incandescent WB setting


So, since pictures 1 and 2 look basically the same, it must be that the Automatic WB setting thinks that it's actual daylight. There is a slight coloration difference, but the general warm cast is the same in those photos and absent in the incandescent.

Sorry this took so long to get up here!
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Old 2008-01-27, 12:44pm
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So which setting looks more like the bead and what color background did you use?
I ask because I have one of these bulbs and have been thinking about adding more light to my current ott light set up, which I use the daylight setting on my camera too.
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  #5  
Old 2008-01-27, 1:43pm
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Actually, the last one (incandescent) seems to render the color better (a little bit truer to the bead). I used a white backdrop in the cube.
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Old 2008-01-27, 5:25pm
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You might want to try the manual setting. Then go to settings and set your white balance. Then take your picture. See if they look more realistic. I have a Coolpix and have been fighting with it for years. The KEY was learning this. The Coolpix is a great camera, I was just fighting with the ligthing and tried many different bulbs. Now it's a piece of cake. Also, this has absolutely nothing to do with a Coolpix and everything to do with just plain photography
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Old 2008-01-27, 6:06pm
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Rose -

Do you mean the "Preset White Balance" option? That one wants you to aim at a "neutral gray object" under the lighting to be used for the final picture, and then it measures it and creates a new WB value. Here's a dumb question - why wouldn't you want to use an object that is known to be white?
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Old 2008-01-27, 6:17pm
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Reveal bulbs simulate daylight, so theoretically you should set the camera on daylight.

Incandescent lights give a yellow tone to a picture, and the white balance camera setting for incandescent tries to compensate for the extra yellowness by making your picture more blue. Theoretically, a picture taken with Reveal bulbs on an incandescent setting should come out too blue. However, your picture looks better blue than it does with the daylight and auto settings.

I'm with Rose. These settings aren't doing it for you. You need to use the Preset White Balance or Custom White Balance or whatever it calls itself on your camera. Is your manual telling you to use a neutral gray object? I don't understand that, either. My camera says to use white. Why don't you try it with a neutral gray object and with a white object and see which gives you better results?

My thought is that maybe using a gray object to set the white balance will help to lighten up your pictures, which look dark. It's worth a try, anyway. When you set your white balance you need to have something that's just the plain color (white or gray), like a sheet of paper or a piece of cloth that doesn't have significant texture.

If you still end up with a color cast, you can fix it in Photoshop, or whatever editing program you'll be using, but it's best to get it right originally.
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Old 2008-01-28, 3:27pm
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If the manual says to use a neutral grey object, go buy a grey card at a photo store. They
are a specific grey tone for light meters and should give you the best results. The reverse
side is true white for photography, you can use it to test your white.
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Old 2008-01-29, 12:28pm
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I used to use GE Reveal bulbs, but they wear down after a while and the pictures started to get a pinkish or yellowish cast. I found that the best thing I have ever done was change to a fluorescent 27W bulb - N:Vision, which you can get for about $6.50 at Home Depot or Lowe's. No light tent, and just two sheets of white computer paper for the background.
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  #11  
Old 2008-01-30, 9:11am
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All I ever use are reveal light bulbs. I bought some of those $15 flourescent bulbs from table top and they make everyting yellow so I went back to the reveal bulbs. This 1st photo is taken with reveal and I only cropped it. You can see there is no yellowing or pinking. The next photo shows it lightened. I photograph my beads on white poster board I get at Walmart.





And then if I am photographing a piece of jewelry and I use the funky acrylic thing I got from Tabletop I don't really have to do anything besides cropping it and sharpening it a little!



And this is what my light box looks like, I never use a tent! (yes, my cat thinks I do this just for him! LOL!)



Hope this helps! Oh, and I haven't changed any settings on my camera, I use a Nikon Cool Pix 4300
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  #12  
Old 2008-01-30, 9:21pm
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Hi Donna,

That helps a lot. I guess I wasn't too specific about the light tent/cube. Seems some folks shine their lights into the tent, and some shine them through the tents, and YMMV (your mileage may vary). I suspect that everyone makes their photo cubes out of different material with different effects on the light (might account for some of the price difference too!). I shine my lights throughthe tent walls, and no direct light from the GE Reveal bulbs reaches the beads (might explain why they are so dark.

Clearly, this scientist needs to go back to the lab and do some further testing. Gotta get one of those grey boards from the photo store, and move my lights around some. I've tried taking photos with the Reveal bulbs shining directly on the beads, and got some significant reflections, so I will likely shine them indirectly somehow.

Thanks for all of the tips, folks! Photography is kind of fun, in a sick, "I'd rather be melting glass" kinda way!
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  #13  
Old 2008-01-31, 10:32am
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I love your cat! That is too funny!

Do you find that with the overhead lights that you get a shadow every time?
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  #14  
Old 2008-02-05, 4:48pm
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I use reveal bulbs. My camera has a setting on it where if I set down something in my photobox that I know is white, aim and depress my shutter button, it will calibrate my camera to that setting.

SO, even though I have a gray background in my pictures, I always put a piece of bright white paper in my photobox to set the white balance then remove it from the box before I start taking pictures. That is what did it for me.

I have a sony cybershot dsc-h1
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Last edited by Moth; 2008-02-05 at 4:50pm. Reason: I wasn't very clear.
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Old 2008-02-05, 5:27pm
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I used the Reveal bulbs for awhile but had so many issues with color. In retrospect, if I had set my white balance they would have worked fine.

It only took my 5 years to figure this out.
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Old 2008-03-20, 11:49pm
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Mary, Do you remember which way you set the white balance with the Mavica?
There is a *custom* white balance setting, and what I get out of the manual is to put the cap on the lens, aim at the subject, and set it that way. The white balance icon flashes until it's set.
But it doesn't work for me. It's too dark. (Yes I took the cap off after, LOL!) Unless I'm doing something else wrong. I don't think there is another white balance setting like auto, or maybe that's it. Or if there is I haven't found it. Confused....

My best picture yet, (outdoors and cloudy) but not quite right, was to leave the cap off and press the custom white balance button on a natural color, (hm...) which is the same color as the cap. Then I set the lighting to indoor, or outdoor depending. Am I doing it right?

Also did you use Reveal or the energy efficient bulbs? I hope this makes sense. It's 3am and I can't sleep. Like this is helping. Not
Anything you can tell me I would really appriciate. Hoping you memory is REALLY, REALLY good.
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Old 2008-03-21, 6:51am
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When color balance sensor reads the color balance, it's not really looking at the color white or gray... it's looking for a neutral color setting. In RGB terms, it's looking for all three colors to have the same number. If you have seen the numbers associated with RGB, each number represents the Red, Green, Blue of RGB. For instance, pure white is 255,255,255. Pure black is 0,0,0. Gray is where all 3 numbers are the same but not those of white or black. For instance, 190,190,190 or 105,105,105 or 211,211,211. The color is considered to be neutral (no color casts) or balanced when all 3 numbers are the same. So if you see a white piece of paper and check it's RGB numbers (you can do this in most if not all of the photo editing programs) and it's 255,255,240 or some other combination that isn't all 255,255,255, then even if it looks white on your monitor, it has a color cast of another color. Sometimes they are very subtil and our eyes are very good at adjusting for us. It's usually not until you compare it side by side with the real object that you can see the difference.

Another thing, most people do not calibrate their monitors for color, contrast and brightness. It might very well look correct on your monitor, but to someone else, it can be way off one way and to another person look off another way. Most monitors are not that far off color wise from the store, but most people run their monitors too bright, which can throw off contrast and color.

Gray cards work very well for doing custom white balances. If it's a neutral gray card. Not all photo cards are created equal. Some gray cards that are used to set exposer in the camera might not be a true neutral gray. So if you use one of these, your color balance won't be correct. White is not recommended for a number of reasons. If you have every put different brands of copier or laser printer paper side by side, you have probably seen one of the reasons... not all white paper or material is the same white. You have bright white, matt white, dull white, ultra bright white, glossy white, etc. Even when a white is a neutral white, if it has a glossy shine and reflects light differently from different parts of the paper, it can affect your color balance if the camera's sensor is half on a hot spot and half off.

A lot of paper and even white material has special chemicals that reflect light added that make things appear whiter than they really are. These will also affect color balance. Bleach used to whiten cloths can also throw the color balance off. This is why a lot of cameras and recommend using a neutral gray card rather than something white.

Most of this really affects people when they need really accurate color. A little bit of color shift usually doesn't affect things too much. And if you are shooting under different lights, say a mix of floresent and tungstan, or sunlight and floresent or halogen or daylight balanced light and non-daylight balanced or old bulbs and new, or any mix of light types, your camera is going to have a hard time getting white balanced figured out in the auto white balance setting. This is when you should do a custom white balance or shoot with a netural color card and then adjust it in your photo editor.

I have several things that I use to check color balance. I have a card called a WhiBal that has neutral white, gray and black areas on it. I take a picture with this credit card size card to the side (so it can be cropped out of the picture) and I adjust my color balance when I edit the picture. I also have a larger Digital Calibration Target that is a true neutral white on one side and neutral black on the other. They now sell them with white, gray and black. I also have several neutral gray cards and a McBeth color chart when I want to make sure my colors are correct over a much broader range.

One other point about what is used for the light tent if you don't use a actual light tent made from neutral white nylon material. If you material is off white, faded, dirty, etc., it will affect the light that passes through and bounces off it. You can use a custom color balance to adjust this shift out though.

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know about color balance... but it's only a small part of the whole process of getting accurate and properly exposed images. It can get more complicated.

Mike
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Old 2008-03-26, 9:05am
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What Mike says....

Also so consider that the camera see "true" colors. What the human eye sees is corrected colors ( yes your brain corrects colors somewhat) ..... Reveal bulbs are not photography bulbs, the are corrected bulbs for human eyes.... Reveal though makes your vision/color rendition comfortable and acceptable to the eye, does not always make a camera happy....

Also along time ago the "neutral gray card" was also called a 18% gray card...

Geez...Its been along time ago with the SLR and B&W film under the enlarger....

Dale
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Old 2008-03-26, 10:33am
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ziggys View Post
Mary, Do you remember which way you set the white balance with the Mavica?
There is a *custom* white balance setting, and what I get out of the manual is to put the cap on the lens, aim at the subject, and set it that way. The white balance icon flashes until it's set.
There are special caps that you put on the lens for setting the white balance. It's like putting a white (or neutral) card in front of the lens. Maybe the Mavica's lens cap has a white/neutral surface inside that is suitable for setting the white balance.

(I'm just figuring this out from browsing photo equipment sites looking for white balance equipment.)
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Old 2008-03-26, 4:39pm
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The filter you put on a camera lens for white balance is called and Expo Disk. It's made up of neutral translucent plastic that lets 18% of the light through. You point it at the light to do a custom white balance. They work ok if you have one light source and you can point your camera towards it. But if you have multiple light sources that are different (different kinds of lights, sunlight and artifical light, light bouncing off colored walls, etc.) then it's harder to obtain a accurate color balance with. They are pretty spendy too. A bunch of photographers set out to prove that there were a lot of other things that could do the same thing a lot cheaper. They used Pringle lids, coffee filters (the white kind), white filters for face masks and a number of other things. The white coffee filters and breathing mask filters where the closest but even the Pringle's lid came pretty close to setting an accurate color balance. This was a very hottly debated topic for some time.

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Old 2008-03-30, 1:15pm
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Phew! Mike, you said a mouth-full. I'll comment later once I absorb this and can think of anything intelligent to say or am willing to risk showing even more ignorance.

But...but... if I take a stab at it, I need to try different white balance materials, shoot pictures, look in photo software for same numbers while crossing my toes and fingers.
(and spend lots of money on different WB cards.) And adjust the pictures to correct the WB....somehow...(I really, really dislike Photoshop so learning a different one is another project).

I'm using a "tent" that is made with steel blue mesh. Now I know, that's isn't good unless I can figure how to correct for it.


Emily: The cap/Expo Disk I have came with the camera, is attached to it. But my camera is an 1998 version (I think). It's old anyway. So the cap could have deteriorated. But I did not aim it at the light source. Still doesn't sound like that's always going to work either.

Mike, what's your fee for taking pictures? Funny, (in a sick sort of way) a friend of mine who inherited her father's camera, took a bead picture in a grocery store under those tube florescents and it was perfect. Or if not perfect as good as I ever want to worry about. Took all of 2 minutes to set up a tri-pod and "canvas", no photo tent, no extra lights, no photo-shopping., nada. Argh!

Anyway, thank you for the detailed response. I really appreciate it.
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Old 2008-04-01, 8:46pm
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Angela, I've pretty much gotten out of charging for my work any more. I mostly shoot for fun and what I want to now. Although since I've gotten into working with glass, that's been eating up a lot of my time. Lighting can be real funny sometimes. It's not so much about brightness but more about angles of the light rays and how it bounces around and reflects off of things. If you look at a round glass object under lights, you can see all of the reflections hitting it. If you move it around while looking through your view finder you can find a place where it's still lit well but the reflective highlights are minimized. This is because the light that is striking the object are bouncing off of it in directions that are not hitting your camera lens. Light is bound by the same geomertry rules that we learned about in school. Or for someone that is good at shooting pool, light bounces the same way as shooting the red ball off the green one so that it knocks the yellow one behind the eight ball into the pocket. Now being able to call the shot first would be someone that would find figuring out light reflections to be a piece of cake.

Mike
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Old 2008-04-02, 1:05pm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ziggys View Post
But...but... if I take a stab at it, I need to try different white balance materials, shoot pictures, look in photo software for same numbers while crossing my toes and fingers.
(and spend lots of money on different WB cards.) And adjust the pictures to correct the WB....somehow...(I really, really dislike Photoshop so learning a different one is another project).
Dunno. Sounds to me like maybe you need to make sure your light bulbs are the same kind (all incandescent, all fluorescent, all "daylight," or whatever), then stick a Pringle's lid or a white coffee filter in front of the camera and set the white balance. (Hey, it could work!)
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Old 2008-04-02, 7:13pm
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Emily, there have been a number photographers that have proven it actually does work... but there are a lot of people that have spent a lot of money for the high priced gizmo's that refuse to believe that they wasted their money.

Seriously, it really comes down to the degree of accuracy you need in color balance. It doesn't matter which color balance tool you use (I find the McBeth Chart the best for really accurate colors at a price that most can still afford), if your white balance tool is not truely neutral, your camera is not truely correct in it's interpretation of color, if your monitor is not calibrated, if your photo editing program doesn't read the color space correctly, if your room light is too bright where you are editing on the computer, if your printer hasn't calibrated his equipment (or you haven't your printer) or your glasses are dirty or your eyes aren't as sharp as they once where...

Any one of the above but more than likely we all experience a combination of most of them at any give time and it throws our color balance off. When all else fails, bring the image up on the screen, hold your glass up next to it and see if they look close. If they do come close, call it good.

Get it in focus, a good depth of field, proper exposure, well lit without a bunch of highlights hiding the details and as close to proper color balance as you can get and half the battle is won on presenting it to it's best effect.

Mike
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Old 2008-04-11, 8:15am
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Jordan View Post
Angela, I've pretty much gotten out of charging for my work any more. I mostly shoot for fun and what I want to now. Although since I've gotten into working with glass, that's been eating up a lot of my time. Lighting can be real funny sometimes. It's not so much about brightness but more about angles of the light rays and how it bounces around and reflects off of things. If you look at a round glass object under lights, you can see all of the reflections hitting it. If you move it around while looking through your view finder you can find a place where it's still lit well but the reflective highlights are minimized. This is because the light that is striking the object are bouncing off of it in directions that are not hitting your camera lens. Light is bound by the same geomertry rules that we learned about in school. Or for someone that is good at shooting pool, light bounces the same way as shooting the red ball off the green one so that it knocks the yellow one behind the eight ball into the pocket. Now being able to call the shot first would be someone that would find figuring out light reflections to be a piece of cake.

Mike
Hi Mike, Sorry so long in responding. Where DOES the time go.
I will pay more attention to how the light reflects off the bead through the view finder, now that you wrote this. It makes a lot of sense, I just never thought about it.
Funny how Geometry applies to so many things. Now I wish I had paid more attention in school. (Or played more pool.) I remember at school in a geometry lesson we watched a movie with Daffy Duck playing.....pool! LOL! That's about the extent of my knowledge though it does seem a lot more interesting now than it did back then.
Thanks Mike,
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Old 2008-04-11, 8:16am
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ziggys ziggys is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Emily View Post
Dunno. Sounds to me like maybe you need to make sure your light bulbs are the same kind (all incandescent, all fluorescent, all "daylight," or whatever), then stick a Pringle's lid or a white coffee filter in front of the camera and set the white balance. (Hey, it could work!)
And that's exactly where I intend to start. I confused myself just thinking about doing all the other steps.
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