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I tried to fix the color in photoshop. The thing is, if I correct the "object"s color to it's correct level, the background turns very GREEN. It almost seems like the object itself shares a different white balance than the background, which really makes each picture quite unfixable.
In fact, I am not even sure if it's a problem with my camera. Could it be the 3 external flash? In case you ask, I already tried turning the lights off of my entire office when taking the shots. There wasn't much difference in the colors.
The lights are set up in a way that 2 flash on the object one on each side, and 1 flash as background light.
I am taking the pictures with the following stats:
F11, 1/160, ISO 200
Custom II Adobe RGB
I tried with every WB, and also preset WB. The only way that it comes close is when I use 3 steps bracketing, the greener exposure is the closest it could get, and it never comes close to the real color of the object.
Anyone got any idea on what might be my problem?
#2 - Are you using a gray card? Google for it if you don't know what one is and use one once you know how. Most cameras allow you to focus on the grey card, set and lock the balance, This will help but is NOT the only solution.
#3 - if you need the ambient light, you need to get a set of studio lights, at least two. We picked these up from our local photo store, $139 for a two light set and could probably be had for less, comes with stands and heads. Silver umbrellas are good to have too. Use 6 hour 500 W blue bulbs (EBW I think?) or 3 hour 250 W blue bulbs. (ECB?) Turn off all lighting sources except for natural window light and use just the studio lamps with umbrellas, the difference is night and day (pun definately intended.)
My wife's site has hundreds of product shots and although I'm a photoshop wizard (ex-scanner operator and color person in printing) I got soooooo tired of wasting hours correcting out yellow and red casts. A good light set and most days all I do is open, crop, save. Lighting temperature is everything. To the eye flourescents "look" blue/cool. but I can assure you to the piezos/films, they are not. :-D
Lastly, if you have the lighting on Auto, the camera will adjust to ambient light not the flash unit light during the pre-shoot focus.
I spent a few hours today testing trying to find the reason why the WB is always off. I haven't yet found the answer, but I have a little more idea on what is happening.
Ambient was never the problem. The 3 flashs are bright enough to wash out the ambient lights. Even then, I already said I shut all lights in my office during the shoot.
What I did today was, I took a series of pictures with a number of combinations of F stops and shutters.
Item: Khaki color piece of cloth
Office lights: ON
light meter shows F11 1/250 so I started with it:
F11 1/250 (the item shows as brown color)
F8 1/350 (brown)
F5 1/500 (brown)
F3.3 1/1000 (brown)
F13 1/80 (brown)
F16 1/30 (brown, but with slight tint of green)
F18 1/2 (overexposed, but color looks more correct)
F22 2" (Surprisingly, quite close to the actual color)
I thought it is very likely to be a problem caused by the 3 flash units. The longer shutter allows the camera to take the actual color of the item, and wash out the color reflected from the flashs.
What I do not get is, I already adjusted the white balance a million times to the flash. I measure the WB by taking a slightly gray picture (with all flash going off). I thought this would have already corrected the WB of the flash units.
So I am still not very sure why this is happening. I am having a photographer to my office today to help me fix the problem. Hopefully he'll be able to do something about it.
