Take a look at these and let me know what you think.

[76winger]

OK, I've only had the D40 a week now, but I've been working to get the lighting and the white balance to a satisfactory level. These are getting close, but the white background still looks greenish gray to me.

Lighting consisted of two 32w 5500k daylight floressent tubes across the top, and three 23w micro-mini CFL, 6500k dayligh lights, one on each side and one in front. And even with all that, I still used flash assist on the front side to get some color out of the body of the pen. All lights were filtered through a white sheet covering the DIY photo booth I made.

I was using manual focus and aperture priorty and had it set to f22 to try and get good depth of field for the pen.

Looking at them through this message editor they look a little green although I didn't notice so much when I was looking at the image through Windows preview. In editing, I still had to raise the brightness and contrast a little to get the details more visible.

I'm guessing I need to move ahead to full manual settings, but I need to get more familiar with the camera before I can tackle that. Soon hopefully!

Thoughts are appreciated. I'm off to sleep on it myself.

 

[mredburn]

I believe part of the problem with the color is your using 2 many different light sources. Try the pictures with only one type of light source at a time. See if that helps.

 

[el_d]

They look pretty good to me, I'm photo challenged though.

 

[terryf]

The type of light you use will make a difference. The greenish haze you get is usually indicative of fluorescent lighting. You want to try and get away from fluro's or use a filter.

 

[ctubbs]

Florescent, Mercury Vapor and High Pressure Sodium light are among the hardest to balance with Florescent probably the worst, especially when two or more types are mixed. The mercury in there will turn green but never consistent. The color temp will change for at least the first five minutes of operation. When I ran my studio, I used only two types of lighting, photo flood and strobe. Photo flood are usually 3200K where strobe was considered north daylight. A good strobe setup can get expensive for home use. Photo floods are not all that bad but they are warm.
Charles

 

[MatthewZS]

I believe part of the problem with the color is your using 2 many different light sources. Try the pictures with only one type of light source at a time. See if that helps.

Also you could try with all those lights using the camera's custom white setting. Basically you chose custom, point the camera at a white surface inside your photo tent with all the lights on, take a picture and the camera uses that "measurement" as it's white point. You'll have to refer to the manual for the exact procedure but that will help the camera make sense of the mixed lights.

 

[Lathemaster]

Matt is on the right track but you want to set the camera's "white" balance using a photography grey card. You can find them online or at a good photography shop. Essentially follow the directions that came with your D40 for user setting of white balance while focusing on the grey card in the light setup. Also use just one color temperature light source(s).

Additionally remember that when we used film we took it into a darkroom for processing. With today's digital technology a good photo processing application is your darkroom and operations such as sharpening and color balance can be done there as well. Gimp is a good open source application to start with. I have both Gimp and Corel Paint Shop Pro and there are others.

My 2 cents

Mike

 

[Sylvanite]

I did a quick tweak (levels, clone, shadows, brightness, contrast, color cast, resize, and unsharp mask) on one of your photos. Is that more what you're looking for? Of course, the goal is to get the pics to come out of the camera that way. Keep trying - custom white balance is the next step.

Regards,
Eric

 

[76winger]

Florescent, Mercury Vapor and High Pressure Sodium light are among the hardest to balance with Florescent probably the worst, especially when two or more types are mixed. The mercury in there will turn green but never consistent. The color temp will change for at least the first five minutes of operation. When I ran my studio, I used only two types of lighting, photo flood and strobe. Photo flood are usually 3200K where strobe was considered north daylight. A good strobe setup can get expensive for home use. Photo floods are not all that bad but they are warm.
Charles

I knew the Florescent lights would cause a greenish color, but I thought the higher 5500-6500k daylight tubes and bulbs I'm using would avoid a lot of that. Yes, strobes aren't in the budget for the foreseeable future, so they're not an option. I'll have to play with the camera settings some more and try all lights of the same color temp only and see what I get.

 

[76winger]

Matt is on the right track but you want to set the camera's "white" balance using a photography grey card. You can find them online or at a good photography shop. Essentially follow the directions that came with your D40 for user setting of white balance while focusing on the grey card in the light setup. Also use just one color temperature light source(s).

I DID find a grey card on my old 35mm camera bag. I'll have to look up how use it in the D40 manual. Thanks for reminding me about that!

Additionally remember that when we used film we took it into a darkroom for processing. With today's digital technology a good photo processing application is your darkroom and operations such as sharpening and color balance can be done there as well. Gimp is a good open source application to start with. I have both Gimp and Corel Paint Shop Pro and there are others.
My 2 cents
Mike

I remember the days of dodging and burning under the enlarger! I never fully mastered it either...

I do have a version of Paintshop Pro (Jasc PSP version 7), I'm not sure if it's the same as the Corel product though. I've heard many talk about Gimp but I've never tried it. How is it for ease of use/learning?

 

[76winger]

I did a quick tweak (levels, clone, shadows, brightness, contrast, color cast, resize, and unsharp mask) on one of your photos. Is that more what you're looking for? Of course, the goal is to get the pics to come out of the camera that way. Keep trying - custom white balance is the next step.

Regards,
Eric

Eric, that's definitly heading in the right direction. The white background actually looks closer to white, but more importantly the colors on the pen look more like the one in my hand rather than getting washed out.

In Paintshop Pro I played with brightness and contrast, and gamma correction, which sometimes works for me, but it doesn't for getting these to level I want to see them. My first goal is to get them as close to correct coming out of the camera (without costing an arm & a leg to do so), so I don't have to so much after the fact editing. But I do need to learn how to edit better as well.

 

[moke]

Remember when you pass any light through anything...like the material in your tent, it acts as a filter. As we all know, filters influence color.

In the old days of film we used to use tents and the same material in front of lights for diffusion material. Back then we had very little control of Color Temp at the film plane. Once when the diffusion material got dirty from a job, we washed it in a washer using Tide with "whitening". The next job we had blue highlights. After two months of frustration and research we discovered that Tide used UV whiteners. We soaked the material in a weak bleach and reshot a product and the UV-blue influence was gone.
While the Kelvin temperture of the bulbs is VERY pertinent, it is grossly effected by the diffusion material.
Also, in my experience by using a color temp meter, Flouresent Bulbs are very subject to color temp fluxuation. Incandesent bulbs---photo floods are designed to keep a constant Color Temp until the very end of it's life. Likewise whether by design or by accident, when the color began to fall it begins to make a noise...like a low level rattleing.

So ultimately, in the Professional world we NEVER use flouresents......just my 2 cents worth.

 

[76winger]

I played around some more today and got some decent results. For those I started a new topic which can read at this location:
http://www.penturners.org/forum/showthread.php?p=1156380#post1156380

Stop in and let me know what you think!