If he's doing cutouts, there's no point in using green. White will work fine, and it won't introduce any color casts that need to be fixed later.
On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 7:27 PM, Bruce Walker <[email protected]> wrote: > You could do all that fiddling and tweaking, or, since this is a > budgeted project, you could spring for an incident light meter. > (Sekonic L-308S: $199 at B&H) > > 1. place lightmeter on table and arm it. > 2. fire flash(es). > 3. read meter and set camera accordingly. > 4. take one perfectly exposed shot. > 5. swap subject part for another part ... go to step 4. > > If you alter the lighting, go to step 1. > > Now with all the time you've saved, take more shots of more subjects, > or savour a coffee. > > > Since you are doing cutouts, you might consider using green screen > techniques. Either paint your background with green chroma-key paint > (eg Rosco 5711) or just get a roll of green screen background. > > You'd have to make sure that none of the green reflects back onto your > subjects, so this idea may not work well for you. > > > On Tue, Jan 24, 2012 at 5:58 PM, Larry Colen <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> >> On 1/24/2012 1:48 PM, Collin Brendemuehl wrote: >>>> >>>> Believe me, as someone who has magic-wanded out more backgrounds that >>>> I care to admit... it works really well SOME of the time. Other times >>>> you a messing around with the magic wand sensitivity setting to keep >>>> it from grabbing portions of your object. >>>> >>>> Bruce is correct. Your images are seriously underexposed. The light >>>> table should be white. It's the same principle as shooting something >>>> on a snow bank. The meter will make the snowbank 18% grey and >>>> underexpose the subject. That's what you've got here. You'll save a >>>> lot of work in post if you expose correctly. Either get off automatic >>>> to manual or use exposure compensation. >>>> >>>> Also, if you have photoshop you may find that working with levels or >>>> curves (to define your "white") will save you a lot of time with the >>>> magic wand. Trust me, you don't want to rely on the magic wand. >>>> >>>> Darren Addy >>>> Kearney, Nebraska >>> >>> >>> >>> I am shooting in Manual mode. >>> Yes, the Magic Wand has been useful. So many circular objects are more >>> easily cut with the oval selection tool. >>> >>> As to the exposure, I only saw that on a couple of shots, obvious on the >>> #3 with the PL. I took it off and have not put it back on. >>> >>> Shots #1& #2, once separated from the background (about 10 seconds of >>> work) displays the detail perfectly for the customer's application. The >>> sense of being underexposed went away with the image on a different >>> background -- pure white. >>> >>> >>> The paper should not be all white, but perhaps white-er than it is. I >>> will be adding some reflectors in the next day. Still, the boss is more >>> than happy with the results achieved. >>> >>> Tomorrow I will put up one of the better, later pics with improved >>> exposure. >> >> >> Since you are shooting in manual mode (and I presume RAW), until you get the >> system dialed in, why not try some shots where you keep cranking up the >> exposure? >> >> I would suggest two variations on "expose to the right": >> >> 1) simply looking at the histogram, this will probably put the table just >> under clipping. >> >> 2) Expose to the right based on the object and let the table clip. >> The histogram should be bi-modal. There should be a peak for the table, and >> one for the object. When you expose to the right, ignore the the bump for >> the table and just keep increasing your exposure until the object itself is >> exposed to the right. >> >> This, of course, has issues if there are sections of your object that are >> close in albedo to that of the table. The alternative would be to put your >> subject on a dark background, do your test shots to expose to the right and >> set your exposure, then remove the dark background, and let the exposure of >> the table fall where it may. >> >> I do hope that you are keeping a notebook with good notes on your different >> lighting setups. Once you get things dialed in, you should have some base >> settings that are very close to perfect, and will probably be good enough >> for most of your subjects. > > -- > -bmw > > -- > PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List > [email protected] > http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net > to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow > the directions. -- David Parsons Photography http://www.davidparsonsphoto.com Aloha Photographer Photoblog http://alohaphotog.blogspot.com/ -- PDML Pentax-Discuss Mail List [email protected] http://pdml.net/mailman/listinfo/pdml_pdml.net to UNSUBSCRIBE from the PDML, please visit the link directly above and follow the directions.
