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Maintaining consistent colour
http://www.x404.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=10061		 Page 1 of 1
Author:  ProfessorF [ Wed Aug 18, 2010 7:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Maintaining consistent colour
As mentioned elsewhere, I've been shooting a lot of production line catalogue stuff for our online shop at work.
It's hugely boring.
What trips me up most, however, is the apparently essential post work needed.
As I'm under an (sadly unavoidable) mix of fluorescent tubes and tungsten lights, I take a snap of the white back ground to balance the camera with.
I should point out that the office we use has no windows, so varying daylight isn't a factor - the light levels remain the same throughout the day.
That done, I get wildly varying results that require a ton of post work in LR to bring everything back to something approximating what I was looking at on the day.
I'd say that for a 4 hour shoot, I easily spend about the same again doing post work just bringing up exposures and sorting colour balances and so on.

The site is www.planetpenguin.co.uk - you'll almost immediately see what I mean.

All the pics were taken under the same set up.
Help! It's not helping me fall in love with the digital photo world!
Author:  paulzolo [ Wed Aug 18, 2010 7:23 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Maintaining consistent colour
Can your camera do custom white balance? You]d sample a white in the light you are using and then work using that.

I’d recommend looking to see if there is a Magic Lantern book for your camera. This range of books if the manual that your camera should have come with.

You might also want to invest in some proper photographic lighting. You can buy starter kits for around £200-£300
Author:  ProfessorF [ Wed Aug 18, 2010 7:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Maintaining consistent colour
paulzolo wrote:
Can your camera do custom white balance? You]d sample a white in the light you are using and then work using that.


Yup -

ProfessorF wrote:
I take a snap of the white back ground to balance the camera with.


paulzolo wrote:
You might also want to invest in some proper photographic lighting. You can buy starter kits for around £200-£300

I'd love to, as soon as I have £200-£300 spare - work's certainly going to pay for it at the moment, as the dreaded 'redundancy' word is being banded about a bit at the moment.
Author:  rustybucket [ Wed Aug 18, 2010 11:06 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Maintaining consistent colour
Without having looked too closely, I can't be too sure but...

  • ...does the colour balance change according to what you're photographing i.e. do certain colours (orange, purple, pastels etc.) just seem to vanish. This may be because the light from the fluorescents is very peaky. Could you add more candescent light to compensate?
  • Is it totally random? Could it be due to flicker or interference? Would adding more diffusion help?
  • Could you set the white balance manually and then lock it? Would that help?

N.B.
I'm only thinking out loud here and without seeing your set-up I could very well be talking out of my bottom.
Author:  ProfessorF [ Wed Aug 18, 2010 11:12 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Maintaining consistent colour
rustybucket wrote:
does the colour balance change according to what you're photographing i.e. do certain colours (orange, purple, pastels etc.) just seem to vanish. This may be because the light from the fluorescents is very peaky. Could you add more candescent light to compensate?


I think there is a correlation between the overall colour I'm shooting.

rustybucket wrote:
Is it totally random? Could it be due to flicker or interference? Would adding more diffusion help?


I don't think it's random, but even though I'm usually over exposing by a stop or so (very dark other wise) things look darker than they should. I don't know if the tube lights frequency is affecting the camera - I'd have thought not though.

rustybucket wrote:
Could you set the white balance manually and then lock it? Would that help?


That's the first thing I do when I get the set up ready - shoot the white background and tell the camera that that's white.
Author:  rustybucket [ Wed Aug 18, 2010 11:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: Maintaining consistent colour
ProfessorF wrote:
I think there is a correlation between the overall colour I'm shooting.


Could you check to see what light peaks you get? Take a CD and incline so as to get a rainbow reflection. Is the rainbow continuous or does it look like this?

Image

Could you drown out any [LIFTED] light with better candescent light?

ProfessorF wrote:
I don't know if the tube lights frequency is affecting the camera - I'd have thought not though.


Easy to test though.

Put your camera on a long exposure time. If the balance-loss rectifies itself you'll know what the issue is. (Can't see it happening though :oops: )
Author:  EddArmitage [ Thu Aug 19, 2010 8:06 am ]
Post subject:  Re: Maintaining consistent colour
Since you use Lr, I'd consider an Xrite color checker passport; it comes with a Lr plugin that aims to make colour correction a breeze, and a fair number of people are saying really good things about it, although I don't personally know anyone with one. It's certainly on my list of nice things to get in the future (if I do more studio-y work).
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