Made a lightbox today!

[GoingUp]

Made myself a lightbox today to play with and see what it can do. I can't seem to get the white balance right.

Any tips on what setting to use on my camera? I tried daylight and tungsten, as well as custom.

The bulb I was using is a GE reveal full color spectrum bulb, 100 watts. Sides and top of the light box were covered in the brightest white muslin fabric I could buy.

Both pics were taken with a Canon 40D and 17-55mm IS lens. Light source was on the left.

The stats on IMG_1463.jpg are:
31mm
f/7
1/15 sec
ISO 100
Pattern metering mode

The stats on IMG_1488.jpg are:
55mm
f3.5
1/50 sec
55mm
ISO 100
Center weighted average white balance

I've had my 40D for only around a month, so keep that in mind as you give me feedback. Thanks for the tips and feedback

 

[Sid59]

without spending too much searching .. i can ask a quick question.

Are you shooting in RAW? If you are not, it's an easy fix and toss it into a editor and change the White Balance on the fly to check out the proper setting. I'm assuming you AUTO WB.

what focal length did you shoot at for the shots? i only want to know because your corners are pretty dark and you have 2 shots at different stops, either hte lighting is bad or that lens has terrible chromatic aberrations,.

did you only light 1 side of the light box?

 

[alfa147x]

I made a lightbox but don't have a camera to use on it
Here is the tutorial

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent/#more-225

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: alfa147x
I made a lightbox but don't have a camera to use on it
Here is the tutorial

http://digital-photography-school.com/blog/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent/#more-225

Thats the tutorial I used for the box.

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: Sid59
without spending too much searching .. i can ask a quick question.

Are you shooting in RAW? If you are not, it's an easy fix and toss it into a editor and change the White Balance on the fly to check out the proper setting. I'm assuming you AUTO WB.

what focal length did you shoot at for the shots? i only want to know because your corners are pretty dark and you have 2 shots at different stops, either hte lighting is bad or that lens has terrible chromatic aberrations,.

did you only light 1 side of the light box?

I did not shoot auto white balance. It was tungsten I believe and all of the pics were shot in raw and then touched up a bit in an editor too.

Only the left side of the box was lit. The lens I was using is listed in my OP.

Here are the focal lengths for the shots. I'll update them in the OP too....

1463 was shot at: 31mm

1488 was shot at: 55mm

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

What I do with my light box is set my WB to Fluorescent (because I use those long lasting fluorescent bulbs) and shoot in RAW. The in-camera WB is not perfect, so when I process the RAW I tweak the WB to what I like and then apply this same WB tweak to all of the pictures I took in the light box. Most if not all RAW software should be able to apply global settings over a wide range of selected files.

Or go read your camera manual and set a custom WB by shooting a gray card or a white card.

 

[GoingUp]

I shot a custom white balance today, and added an extra light and the damn thing still comes out gray....

Heres the latest. I made a new whitebox that is three times the size of my old one and added an extra 100W reveal light. I think I just need to jump up to a couple of 500 watt halogens.

beer.jpg

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
I shot a custom white balance today, and added an extra light and the damn thing still comes out gray....

Heres the latest. I made a new whitebox that is three times the size of my old one and added an extra 100W reveal light. I think I just need to jump up to a couple of 500 watt halogens.

beer.jpg

Try to increase your exposure. In my experience light box photos come out looking a lot cleaner when you try to expose as far to the right as possible (meaning exposing as brightly as possible without actually clipping any details except for maybe the white background).

Get yourself a tripod and a remote shutter cord. Shoot around +1 EV and see what you get. Your camera's metering is most likely getting confused because it thinks the scene is brighter than it actually is due to the white background, resulting in underexposed, grayish images.

This happens all the time when photographing snow. The snow is so bright that it fools the camera's metering, so if you rely on the camera's metering all the time your snow pictures will turn out grayish and underexposed. You have to manually overexpose the shot to compensate for the camera's metering confusion.

Adding a more powerful light will do nothing for you other than allowing you to shoot at faster shutter speeds. The amount of light that reaches the sensor is completely controlled by the camera itself.

 

[foghorn67]

how much ambient light (besides your lightbox lights) is leaking in? Did you turn off all the other lights?

 

[alfa147x]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
I shot a custom white balance today, and added an extra light and the damn thing still comes out gray....

Heres the latest. I made a new whitebox that is three times the size of my old one and added an extra 100W reveal light. I think I just need to jump up to a couple of 500 watt halogens.

beer.jpg

Get yourself a tripod and a remote shutter cord.

You could also use a the timed shitter in the camera

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
I shot a custom white balance today, and added an extra light and the damn thing still comes out gray....

Heres the latest. I made a new whitebox that is three times the size of my old one and added an extra 100W reveal light. I think I just need to jump up to a couple of 500 watt halogens.

beer.jpg

Try to increase your exposure. In my experience light box photos come out looking a lot cleaner when you try to expose as far to the right as possible (meaning exposing as brightly as possible without actually clipping any details except for maybe the white background).

Get yourself a tripod and a remote shutter cord. Shoot around +1 EV and see what you get. Your camera's metering is most likely getting confused because it thinks the scene is brighter than it actually is due to the white background, resulting in underexposed, grayish images.

This happens all the time when photographing snow. The snow is so bright that it fools the camera's metering, so if you rely on the camera's metering all the time your snow pictures will turn out grayish and underexposed. You have to manually overexpose the shot to compensate for the camera's metering confusion.

Adding a more powerful light will do nothing for you other than allowing you to shoot at faster shutter speeds. The amount of light that reaches the sensor is completely controlled by the camera itself.

Thanks for the tip. Jumping up to +1 EV really seemed to help!

the_tank.jpg

Edit: And all other lights were off, although I am in a red room.... I also was using a tripod and my timer on the camera.

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: alfa147x

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
I shot a custom white balance today, and added an extra light and the damn thing still comes out gray....

Heres the latest. I made a new whitebox that is three times the size of my old one and added an extra 100W reveal light. I think I just need to jump up to a couple of 500 watt halogens.

beer.jpg

Get yourself a tripod and a remote shutter cord.

You could also use a the timed shitter in the camera

:laugh:

 

[fuzzybabybunny]

Originally posted by: Gobadgrs

Thanks for the tip. Jumping up to +1 EV really seemed to help!

the_tank.jpg

Edit: And all other lights were off, although I am in a red room.... I also was using a tripod and my timer on the camera.

That's more like it!

Make sure you have mirror lock up enabled as well. A tripod and a timer isn't going to be enough to keep your image as sharp as possible with the shutter speeds you're shooting at.

 

[alfa147x]

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: alfa147x

Originally posted by: fuzzybabybunny

Originally posted by: Gobadgrs
I shot a custom white balance today, and added an extra light and the damn thing still comes out gray....

Heres the latest. I made a new whitebox that is three times the size of my old one and added an extra 100W reveal light. I think I just need to jump up to a couple of 500 watt halogens.

beer.jpg

Get yourself a tripod and a remote shutter cord.

You could also use a the timed shitter in the camera

:laugh:

I am so immature so i wont change it, it was a nice laugh :laugh: :wine:

 

[alfa147x]

I made one too and here are the first shots

http://inkedpaper.com/2007/12/23/lightbox/

 

[GoingUp]

Originally posted by: alfa147x
I made one too and here are the first shots

http://inkedpaper.com/2007/12/23/lightbox/

Looks like you need to increase your exposure to make your background more white. Also, you might want to set a custom white balance. That really seems to help.

 

[alfa147x]

Originally posted by: Gobadgrs

Originally posted by: alfa147x
I made one too and here are the first shots

http://inkedpaper.com/2007/12/23/lightbox/

Looks like you need to increase your exposure to make your background more white. Also, you might want to set a custom white balance. That really seems to help.

Ill try that the next time i use the box

check this out

http://inkedpaper.com/2007/12/...ts-from-the-light-box/

Yeah laugh at my box i could care less... but these seem better

 

[OdiN]

They look underexposed