Advice needed regarding lighting for product photography

Baron C · 2 Oct 2014 at 15:36

Hi all,
I could use some advice to understand what is happening in this situation. ( what am I doing wrong?)

equipment used;
35mm 1.8 ( used at 1.8- 3)
Large softbox with 6500k bulb (bulb is a cheapo, relevant?)

I was shooting some food products for practice.
The products were well lit ( I thought)
The softbox was the only main source of light as I switched off other lights. My reasoning being to keep the lighting source at one temperature.I also was shooting inside late evening.

I upped my EV and adjusted throughout the shoot. (200 images)

I took my shots and went to Lightroom. When I went to develop I found that the temperature in the images averaged 4000k. Sure I can bump it up in Lightroom.
I just want to get into the habit of getting it right in situ.

I have read the strobist but clearly it still needs sinking in.

What I want to understand are;

1) the correlation between the 6500k softbox and the 4000k in Lightroom, do I need to compensate more say with another softbox or is this to be expected?

2) should I have had the other room lighting (fluorescent ) switched on ?

3) I'm still unsure about using differing light sources, in this case the softbox and fluorescent strip lighting, is it ok to mix sources like that when trying to hit ... Or am I misunderstanding?

Sh4rkie · 2 Oct 2014 at 16:14

Did you set the camera to manual white balance or leave it on auto? I suspect auto and the camera got it wrong.

Baron C · 2 Oct 2014 at 16:25

Sh4rkie said:
Did you set the camera to manual white balance or leave it on auto? I suspect auto and the camera got it wrong.

I should have stated, I was in full manual, I had WB in cloudy. I suspect this could be the reason.

I maybe should have set a custom WB?

Sh4rkie · 2 Oct 2014 at 18:57

Baron C said:
I should have stated, I was in full manual, I had WB in cloudy. I suspect this could be the reason.

I maybe should have set a custom WB?

Yes, set the K value on the camera to that of the bulbs. If you're shooting RAW it'd take a couple of clicks to change all the photos on mass to the correct temperature anyway.

For product shots ideally you need to shoot a colour card first so you get a colour accurate shot as the general (not always) idea is to get a 1:1 reproduction vs more creative colour toning in 'normal' photography. That way you can profile the shoot in LR and everything should be fine with little or no colour work required in post.

Baron C · 2 Oct 2014 at 21:27

Sh4rkie said:
Yes, set the K value on the camera to that of the bulbs. If you're shooting RAW it'd take a couple of clicks to change all the photos on mass to the correct temperature anyway.

For product shots ideally you need to shoot a colour card first so you get a colour accurate shot as the general (not always) idea is to get a 1:1 reproduction vs more creative colour toning in 'normal' photography. That way you can profile the shoot in LR and everything should be fine with little or no colour work required in post.

Thankyou.
That explains it . I can see where I have to improve in my workflow.