@xeniavintage wrote:
I'm at my wits' end!! I am wanting to up the quality of my listing photos and purchased 3 LimoStudio 3000 watt lightboxes. This has given me PLENTY of light for my items but every time I take a picture yellow lines appear in the photo!!! Also the picture is always dull even though I have tons of light.
I see the lines clearly, although I think I would describe them as "bands" because they're not really clearly-defined; they're more like unexpected color shifts, wandering regularly back and forth between one shade and another going down the image.
@xeniavintage wrote:My lighting is fine (at least I think!) so I'm thinking its my digital camera settings. At this point I have no clue and would appreciate greatly for any help! Thank you!!!
I think it's your camera too, and in particular how it's reacting to that kind of lighting. I assume that when you rotate the camera 90° and shoot the same view in Portrait mode, the bands rotate as well. Are you able to adjust the camera for a slower shutter speed? (Setting a smaller aperture should trigger a slower shutter speed, if you can't control the shutter speed directly.) If you can, I think that your unwanted bands may either get much thinner (with more bands from top to bottom) or possibly disappear altogether.
Are these new lights LED-powered? What I think you're picking up is very rapid on-and-off pulsing of AC-powered LEDs as the camera is taking the photo. When the LEDs are at full brightness, you would see a normal white background, but when one or two of your lights have cycled off (and we're talking milliseconds, really), the ambient light stays visible, and adds a yellowish tinge. The camera scans the image from either top-to-bottom or bottom-to-top, so the bands will be horizontal relative to the camera. If you turn it vertical for Portrait mode, your image will have vertical bands.
I suspect that if you changed to an equal amount of incandescent light bulbs surrounding the subject, this symptom would go away. Alternatively, see if a slower shutter speed will slow the exposure enough that the bands all blend together.
Also, more generally, I really wouldn't recommend a white background, because the camera will end up silhouetting the subject as it tries to equalize the exposure of the darker subject with the bright white background surrounding it. (This is the effect you noticed as the subject seeming "always dull" regardless of how much light you put on it.) You'd have to go anywhere up to one f-stop overexposed to get a decent rendering of the subject in the middle because of all that white around it. I would suggest getting much closer in to the subject, to minimize the white areas, and also ditching the white altogether in favor of a 50% gray (I use a gray towel).
A gray background serves to balance the exposure across the full frame, and the gray color will not skew the camera's Automatic White Balance, in cases where you have not locked it in to one particular white balance setting (e.g. Tungsten for incandescent lighting, or Fluorescent, etc.). Thus it will do a much better job of accurately rending the object's color. (The worst possible thing you could do is put a bright surrounding color around it as a backdrop, as the camera will go bonkers trying to figure out what the "real" color looks like.)
Mainly, I'm curious to know whether your photo lights are LED-powered, because I think that's where your problem is likely to be coming from, if so. The all-white background is perhaps exaggerating the effect and making it more visible than it otherwise would be. In any event, your best bet long-term might be to shoot against a 50%-gray backdrop, and then paste your subject onto a surrounding white background later if desired.
