This has bothered me for years, please help!

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eccles030

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Hi everyone,

Seems like a good community here so wanted to ask people's advice on something if possible. I've always owned Canon Digital SLR's for taking product images at our company (chocolates, box shots etc) but have a big problem. The images looks great on the camera's LCD screen but when I import them onto my Mac, the once crystal 'white' background I took the image on goes very dark, almost dark peach and needs re-touching to to brighten the white up.

Is there anything I'm doing wrong? I have adequate lighting when the photo was taken with professional lights etc and I'm importing the images sometimes through Aperture and sometimes in Apple's iPhoto depending which machine I'm on (pretty sure this isn't the cause though).

The camera I have now is a Canon EOS DS126151.

I'm going crazy having to lighten everything all the time. Surely if my lighting is good on the original then I shouldn't need to manually lighten them all the time?!

Many thanks in advance for your help.

Regards,
Mark
 
Hi Mark,

Welcome to the forum. I assume you are taking the pictures using one of the camera’s auto functions (Automatic or Aperture priority). If there is a lot of white in the picture, the camera will under expose and you have to use the exposure adjustment button to add 1 to 1.5 stops. If you are getting some colour cast, that is due to the white balance, if you are shooting under tungsten lights (normal bulbs) you have to set the WB to that on the camera before you shoot.
 
If you have the same colour space set on your camera as in your image editing package you should be OK. Sounds like this could be your problem. Try setting the colour space in your camera and your editor to sRGB - don't use Adobe RGB unless you have a particular reason to.

Try that and let us know. :)
 
Im wondering if your camera is set to srgb and your screen or photoshop is set to Adobe rgb.
 
Are you shooting in jpeg or raw? If it's jpeg then as long as the colour spaces match and you've not got your monitor setup to a crazy tint/brightness setting then they should be pretty similar to what you saw on screen.

If you're shooting raw then the screen will be displaying the jpeg version which will have had your white balance settings applied to it - depending on your editing software your raw file won't have these set and you'll need to manually adjust to get back to what you were expecting.

If neither of those help then have you checked your monitor settings? It might be worth calibrating it so that you know that white in picture = white on screen.
 
Can I just ask, what is a "Canon EOS DS126151"?

It does sound very much like one of the the following as stated above:

White balance
Colour balance
and could also be the exposure.

Also, are you shooting in RAW? If you are, the preview on the LCD screen is not the RAW file in itself, it is I believe, a JPEG preview of the shot.

Haha. Incapete beat me to it!
 
Hi all,

Thanks for your rapid and constructive replies. I'll answer a few questions for you to help work out the problem further. I do apologise in advance, although I'm a designer by trade, photography isn't a strong point and may need some more guidance on how to change settings on the camera etc!

• The camera is indeed a Canon 400D - sorry my bad

• I have uploaded a photo demo - sorry I've had to pixelate the design of the packaging as it's not been cleared yet. You can see how crappy the background is though. That was taken on a white piece of card so obviously not good. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/eccles030/test/IMG_2522.jpg?t=1260968524

• Im shooting in JPG not RAW

• I'm using Auto White Balance

• I have taken a screenshot of my Photoshop colour settings for you to see if anything is not as it should be. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/eccles030/test/desktop.jpg?t=1260969057

• iPhoto has the setting "Embed ColourSync profile" ticked when importing


Hope this is all you need to help further! Thanks everyone I appreciate the newbie help.

Mark
 
Hi Mark, white balance and an exposure adjustment will fix that.

Can you reshoot?

What light source are you using? the orange colour cast implies it is tungsten so you need to set the tungsten setting on your camera.
 
ShawWellPete said:
Hi Mark, white balance and an exposure adjustment will fix that.

Can you reshoot?

What light source are you using? the orange colour cast implies it is tungsten so you need to set the tungsten setting on your camera.
Click to expand...

Hi mate,

Thanks Ill have a play around with the settings. Here is a pic of what we use for our light source: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v302/eccles030/test/93919794.jpg?t=1260971142

It's been here for years but seems to do the job. Do we need a specific setting for this or anything?

Thanks.
 
It looks like your use of "auto" in the white balance could be an issue. I presume you are hooking the flash to the camera via a cord and actually firing it instead of using the modelling bulb. Change your WB settiing to "flash" (the pic of the lightening bolt) and that should make a difference.
 
With your pic and the setup details it does sound like it's a white balance issue - on the 400D you can create a custom white balance based on a white or 18% grey card (can't remember which!) which you take a picture of at the start of your shoot, set the custom WB and then all subsequent image will have this applied to them. This takes into account any changes in the ambient light or colour temperature of your flash.

The other option is to shoot in raw format which allows you to set the WB later - it's as simple as selecting a white object (like your background) and Lightroom or PS will apply the WB based on that.

Getting the WB right should also mean your product shots have a more accurate colour representation.
 
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