Article #1 Why your digital camera does what it does.
First of all you will need to learn how to use the camera in its manual mode. Why? Because in the auto modes it try’s to fix everything for you. Basically your camera is designed to make good consistent snapshots. One of the things that photo technicians discovered over the years was that if you took all of the colors in a regular snapshot type of picture and added them up you would almost always get a neutral gray.
So, when the electronic manufactures started making digital cameras they incorporated this idea into how the camera’s chip sees the colors in a picture. The chip is more like your eye than like film. Film had to be made to work with certain types of light. I am sure everyone remembers seeing pictures taken with film cameras inside when the flash did not go off. Remember those orange or yellow pictures? That’s because the film was manufactured to give correct color when used in daylight or flash, not room light. The light inside your house is much more yellow orange in color. Your eye however does not see this light as orange. Why, because sort of like the chip in your camera, your eye and brain can adjust the perceived color that you see.
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The digital camera can do the same thing. In the auto mode it changes the recorded image so that the orange is no longer visible in the picture if you are shooting snapshots. Remember, everything adds up to gray if the camera is in the auto mode. Any auto mode. You have to turn off all of the automatic modes. When you do this, you can set your product picture up and switch out the products without having to change anything on the camera.
So,
· Turn off the flash · Set the ISO to a manual setting, usually around 200 ISO
· Turn off the automatic exposure system by setting the camera on Manual
· Set the exposure manually. Usually if you are using photofloods in the 250 watt range, the camera will be set around f8 and ½ second exposure time. (You will find out later what an f-stop like f8 is. The ½ second is just the length of time that the camera’s sensor sees the light.)
· Set the White Balance on the camera to match the lighting system you are using.
· USE A TRIPOD!!!
Part #2 More on Manual Exposure and your camera.
I get lots of questions about how do I set the camera manually. Well, big problem. Each camera brand and sometimes between models of the same brand the systems are different. Read your instruction book It should tell you how to do the following.
#1 Turn off the flash.
#2 Set the ISO (film speed) to a manual mode, probably around 200.
#3 Set the shutter speed and the f-stop.
Why do all of this you ask? Because most digital cameras are designed to take snapshots. When you take a snapshot probably 99% of the time if you were to add up all of the colors in the picture, reds, blues, grays, greens, etc. you would get a neutral gray color. The same is usually true about the densities in your average snapshot. If you added up all of the light, dark, darker, and black areas in a snap shot it usually comes out a neutral gray. So, this concept is programmed into the camera. You have to turn this system off because when you are shooting product pictures you very seldom have a picture full of different items, people, backgrounds etc. You normally have one product and one background. Let's say you are shooting blue jeans on a white background. You do not have any reds in the picture. Just blue and white. So, the camera will try to add red to the picture to get back to a neutral gray. When you adjust the picture in whatever picture control program you are using to get the blue jeans to look right, the background usually ends up pink. This because the camera took red out of the picture. In order for you to get the blue jeans to look right, you had to add red back into the picture. Just pretend that the blue rectangle in the white is your pair of blue jeans. Did you get something like this?
Ok, let's pretend that you are shooting a red blouse on a white background.
Did you end up with something like this. A blue or cyan background.
Again, the auto white balance is trying to fix your picture. It is trying to add up all of the colors and get gray. You have to turn that system off. You do that by setting the white balance. You can usually just set the camera for the type of lights you are using like the tungsten setting for hot type of tungsten or quartz halogen lights or if you are using 5000K daylight fluorescent bulbs then you can set it at the daylight setting. Best of all is to do a custom white balance if that option is available on your camera. That way when you shoot items on a white background it stays white and the colors of the products are still correct.
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