B R A N D X®
Familiar Face
- Messages
- 63
- Location
- SouthEast USA
Hi Folks,
I'm new around here and I apologize if this has been covered by other members who are photographers, but I've seen a few threads now where folks are talking about shooting photo's of their hats at High ISO settings (more grainy noise) to avoid a color shift of the hat's true felt/ribon color due to flash usage or where they are apologizing/explaining that the hat color is not accurately represented due to using a flash.
The reality is that most professional product photography is done under strobe lighting which is a fancy kind of off-camera flash unit. If you have a rudimentary understanding of Color Temperatures and how they relate to White Balance you can get a much more accurate and consistent representation of your hat's color *with* flash than without.
When you are shooting a hat indoors at night you are most likely in an environment with a color temperature of aprox. 2500-2800º Kelvin (most incandescent bulbs). If you are shooting indoors during daytime you may be getting a mixture of indirect sunlight, incandescent light or other sources such as fluorescent lighting in which case the color temperature can be just about anything depending on the ratio of the various sources!
Most flashes fire at daylight temperature which is around 6500º Kelvin.
If you'd like to use flash indoors *and* capture the color of your hat relatively accurately you can go in to the camera's menu system and find the settings for WB (White Balance). Set it to either "flash" (ideal since the camera knows at what temp its flash will fire) or alternatively...... "Daylight".
You may play around a bit with the camera's various WB setting in the menu until you end up with results that appear on your monitor to closely match the true color of the hat. Of course whether your monitor is calibrated or not can also make a huge difference in what you are seeing, but that's a subject for another time!
Remember to set the camera's WB back to the camera's default of Auto before your next snapshot session!!:eusa_doh:
To take it a step further, avoid "mixed" lighting by only combining the flash with your incandescent bulbs *or* with daylight through a window. Try to minimize the number of light sources.
If you really want to get fancy you can go to a hobby/craft shop and buy a small......like 3'x3'...... piece of white foamcore to bounce some of the flash on to the darker areas of the hat thus illuminating the hat more evenly.
The *best* way for a non-professional photographer to shoot hats without spending a ton of money would be to buy 2 3'x3' pieces of foam core and set them up on end at 45º angles behind the hat and just out of the camera's frame. This will capture the flash coming from the front of the shot and bounce it evenly back towards the hat thus better illuminating the sides and top of the hat.
I hope this is helpful for someone.......
I've learned a lot here in a short period (got turned on to Art Fawcet's hats for example
) and was just looking for a way to give back to the community.
Cheers!
I'm new around here and I apologize if this has been covered by other members who are photographers, but I've seen a few threads now where folks are talking about shooting photo's of their hats at High ISO settings (more grainy noise) to avoid a color shift of the hat's true felt/ribon color due to flash usage or where they are apologizing/explaining that the hat color is not accurately represented due to using a flash.
The reality is that most professional product photography is done under strobe lighting which is a fancy kind of off-camera flash unit. If you have a rudimentary understanding of Color Temperatures and how they relate to White Balance you can get a much more accurate and consistent representation of your hat's color *with* flash than without.
When you are shooting a hat indoors at night you are most likely in an environment with a color temperature of aprox. 2500-2800º Kelvin (most incandescent bulbs). If you are shooting indoors during daytime you may be getting a mixture of indirect sunlight, incandescent light or other sources such as fluorescent lighting in which case the color temperature can be just about anything depending on the ratio of the various sources!
Most flashes fire at daylight temperature which is around 6500º Kelvin.
If you'd like to use flash indoors *and* capture the color of your hat relatively accurately you can go in to the camera's menu system and find the settings for WB (White Balance). Set it to either "flash" (ideal since the camera knows at what temp its flash will fire) or alternatively...... "Daylight".
You may play around a bit with the camera's various WB setting in the menu until you end up with results that appear on your monitor to closely match the true color of the hat. Of course whether your monitor is calibrated or not can also make a huge difference in what you are seeing, but that's a subject for another time!
Remember to set the camera's WB back to the camera's default of Auto before your next snapshot session!!:eusa_doh:
To take it a step further, avoid "mixed" lighting by only combining the flash with your incandescent bulbs *or* with daylight through a window. Try to minimize the number of light sources.
If you really want to get fancy you can go to a hobby/craft shop and buy a small......like 3'x3'...... piece of white foamcore to bounce some of the flash on to the darker areas of the hat thus illuminating the hat more evenly.
The *best* way for a non-professional photographer to shoot hats without spending a ton of money would be to buy 2 3'x3' pieces of foam core and set them up on end at 45º angles behind the hat and just out of the camera's frame. This will capture the flash coming from the front of the shot and bounce it evenly back towards the hat thus better illuminating the sides and top of the hat.
I hope this is helpful for someone.......
I've learned a lot here in a short period (got turned on to Art Fawcet's hats for example
) and was just looking for a way to give back to the community.Cheers!
