OK, first off I suck at photography. I know this but am trying desperately to add professionalism to my listings even though I don't sell much and do it more as a hobby than anything else.
I use a light box but my issue is that my photos come out either too dark or with an off color background (like below). I don't use a tripod and prefer not to.
My D3300 settings are as follows:
Shutter 1/30
F4
ISO 100
White Balance - Fluorescent
EV +1.00
From anyone else who uses a DSLR, what can be done to improve these? I've seen some exquisite photography from some of you and could use your help.
Just adjust the white balance and brightness using free photo software - like so:
It depends on where you want to go, and how much you want to do. If you want to get it right the first time you need to use different settings and lights. Your color balance is set for florescent, are you using florescent lighting? Do you do a color balance calibration? The light that produces the most natural rendition is sunlight. Sunlight color is approximately 5,000 degree Kelvin. Most flash units are calibrated to be as close to that as possible. You can purchase lightbulbs that mirror that, usually referred to as "full spectrum" or "daylight" bulbs. You can purchase a flash unit or photography light that will provide that light for you, and would be better than lightbulbs tbh. If you are trying to use florescent lights and take natural photos without having to color correct or edit, you are going to have a rough time because 9 times out of 10, alongside florescent bulbs you also have natural daylight streaming into the rooms, and those will conflict and cause issues 🙂 I pulled your photo into Pixlr (https://pixlr.com/ I use it a lot, it's a free online photo editing software), I bumped up the exposure, bumped up the brightness, I did an automatic level adjust, I adjusted the temperature to be warmer, lightened the highlights, lightened shadows, I removed your background and painted in a pure white replacement... Etc... There are tons of things you can do.... but it's all personal taste. Here's what I came up with.... But you can still see the blue casting (especially in the shadows - I think if I used photoshop it would have been better, but I don't have that on all my computers, just my photography one)... and I think that's because of you doing the florescent balancing thing. It's tricky I know. The best advice I can give you to take you to the next level is to get one flash unit, and set it up to use or get yourself a more natural light source than florescent bulbs. I don't use my pro camera for pictures on ebay, it's not worth the effort for me pulling it out and hooking everything up, etc. I just use my cell phone. I do have some handy little LED lights that has a psuedo-natural setting (it has warm, cool, and combination), the combination setting works great and they supposedly plug into your aux jack of your cell phone (my cell doesn't have an aux jack), so I just hand hold the light.... Lemme see if I can find you a link to them on ebay here, to give you an idea.... https://www.ebay.com/itm/265274655469?var=565138475507&hash=item3dc39a02ed:g:T9MAAOSwklVhHevb I bought a bunch of these at a flea market several years ago... so I have a ton on hand, they make a world of difference for small items like earrings or rings.... I also bought one of these that I use and it works similar (cool mode, warm mode, and combined mode), and I use the combined mode mostly on it too... https://www.ebay.com/itm/394048709294?hash=item5bbf2222ae:g:ZaEAAOSwG-di51YK... And I use both of these tools in a store that is full of florescent lights 🙂
Anyway, sorry for the rambling, I hope this helps.
not knowing the color of the object, making the white is pretty basic in any photo editing software....
the 5000K explanation is excellent above....shadows and extrenous light are your enemies
I always use slaves/sync flash
so it minimizes editing time....
