lighting

[paws55]

Although my photos have improved I still have a long way to go.  The photos are a little too dark so when I edit them to where they are light enough they lose the crispness of the item in the photo.  I use one indoor 60watt light overhead, two light bulbs that have printed on them 60hz 120vac 1250 lumens 5000k and two cheap halogen lights that came with a light box.  Am I needing bulbs with more lumen?  I've adjusted the white balance as the instructions say.  I use the 1+ or 1 1/3+ setting, no flash and the ISO is 100. 

I sell on Etsy and the standards are pretty high for photos on the site.  If I could get the photos crisp to show the detail better it would really be great.

Thanks for any help from the experts out there!

Patsy

[TTMartin]

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@paws55 wrote:

Although my photos have improved I still have a long way to go.  The photos are a little too dark so when I edit them to where they are light enough they lose the crispness of the item in the photo.  I use one indoor 60watt light overhead, two light bulbs that have printed on them 60hz 120vac 1250 lumens 5000k and two cheap halogen lights that came with a light box.  Am I needing bulbs with more lumen?  I've adjusted the white balance as the instructions say.  I use the 1+ or 1 1/3+ setting, no flash and the ISO is 100. 

I sell on Etsy and the standards are pretty high for photos on the site.  If I could get the photos crisp to show the detail better it would really be great.

Thanks for any help from the experts out there!

Patsy

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You don't need different bulbs, you need to get more light to the sensor. You are on the right track with +1 or +1 1/3 exposure compensation. But, because of the large amount of white in the back ground it is not enough. Keep upping the exposure compensation until you don't have to adjust the exposure in post processing. 

[ScottyP]

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@TTMartin wrote:

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@paws55 wrote:

Although my photos have improved I still have a long way to go.  The photos are a little too dark so when I edit them to where they are light enough they lose the crispness of the item in the photo.  I use one indoor 60watt light overhead, two light bulbs that have printed on them 60hz 120vac 1250 lumens 5000k and two cheap halogen lights that came with a light box.  Am I needing bulbs with more lumen?  I've adjusted the white balance as the instructions say.  I use the 1+ or 1 1/3+ setting, no flash and the ISO is 100. 

I sell on Etsy and the standards are pretty high for photos on the site.  If I could get the photos crisp to show the detail better it would really be great.

Thanks for any help from the experts out there!

Patsy

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You don't need different bulbs, you need to get more light to the sensor. You are on the right track with +1 or +1 1/3 exposure compensation. But, because of the large amount of white in the back ground it is not enough. Keep upping the exposure compensation until you don't have to adjust the exposure in post processing. 

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And upping the exposure compensation will make the camera need more light. You want it to get the extra light by slowing the shutter down, not by raising the ISO (which kills image quality, detail) and not by opening the lens aperture to a lower f/number, which makes Depth Of Field shallower, possibly making impossible to get the entire subject in focus).

 A slow shutter, however, will create hand-held camera shake blur. This is where a tripod comes in, eliminating camera shake.  Get one that lets you shoot down at a subject as shown above or by some other similar tripod design. 

[jrhoffman75]

Hi Patsy.

Here's the histogram of the image from your camera.

Given the significant amount of white in your image here's what you want it to look like.

Your camera has a histogram display (page 62); adjust the exposure compensation till it looks similar to that and you won't have to be increasing exposure so much in post.

If you look at page 50 of your manual you will see how you can set a custom white balance; then you won't have to be dealing with it in post.