Taking Photographs

[Blackswanwood]

I didn't want to hijack/distract from the thread asking for advice on buying a camera so thought I'd ask my question separately ...

I find that taking "holiday" type pictures works fine on my iPhone but taking pictures of the boxes I make is a lot harder to get right. The colour often looks different. My method is stick it on the corner of the bench (preferably on a sunny day as I have cold LED lights), point, perhaps zoom a bit/move the bench light around and shoot.

Are there some simple rules/tips that should be adopted by photography numpties like me to increase the odds of a better outcome.

 

[Amplidyne]

You really have opened a can of worms with this one.
First rule is not to mix light sources. Natural light colour changes thorough the day, or even by the colour of the room, so you want to use artificial light arranged to look natural, or wholly natural light, and set the white balance of the camera for that source.
Get a couple of reflectors, any piece of white board will do, to reflect light into darker areas.
Shoot in RAW, and process to give the result you want as well. If you don't have a RAW converter try RAW Therapee. It's free / open source.
What result are you trying to achieve though? "Natural setting" "seamless white background" "seamless other colour" or "isolated on white"?

Whatever you won't get satisfactory results without taking time on the setup.

 

[MintSauce]

You don’t mention which model of iPhone you have so not sure if you can shoot in RAW. My suggestion doesn’t rely on RAW.

1. Purchase a grey card / white balance card. They can be card, plastic or fabric.

2. Use the card to set/fix the white balance on your iPhone. The card should be in the same light source as the object you wish to photograph.

3. Take the photo. Set the white balance again if the light source changes.

The above should get you closer to an accurate colour rendition but do be aware that different screens/monitors may show a different rendition due to their different calibrations.

Good job you only mentioned photography of boxes. If you were also taking photos of your sharpening technique the thread would go thermonuclear (possibly).

 

[Amplidyne]

Ah I missed the fact that he's shooting on an iPhone. I thought that was at other times. My mistake.
Also, I wasn't saying that the OP absolutely needs to shoot in RAW, just that in a lot of cases, it's less damaging to make any changes necessary.
If you can't use RAW, just use what you can. Preferably uncompressed images.

 

[Sideways]

Just a few ideas:

A plain background that doesn't distract. Some white paper on a roll is ideal. Wide enough that it can be placed some distance behind the box, so it will be out of focus and look smooth, but will fill the frame behind your boxes. By concentrating more or less light on your box and not on the background, you can make the background look any shade of grey.

You can do still life photographs with all sorts of light, but a main light and a fill in light is a classic, simple combination. The main light does most of the work. The fill light lightens up shadowed areas so you can still see detail in them. It is very common to put the main light above and to the side of the object shining down like we expect sunlight to fall. The fill "usually" comes from the other side (say 90 degrees around) and is less strong.

Another way to achieve this is ambient light for the main and one artificial source for the fill, but you need to match the colour of the fill to the ambient at that time. So this adds complications.

Small bright sources of light throw hard shadows and reflections. Diffuse light sources are much softer and have a different feel. This is an aesthetic choice. Look at the Wera Tool Rebel adverts. These are high contrast images taken with small bright light sources.
I imagine soft light will work better for your boxes. Shine bright light through a biggish sheet of paper or something white and translucent to soften it.
Bring a light closer and it becomes effectively bigger and softer.
Move it further away and it becomes effectively smaller and harsher, but of course dimmer.

Lastly. Take a few hours over this. Watch some youtube about tabletop or still life photography and don't get hooked on the gear. Just experiment with a couple of battery or desk lamps as main and fill. Try pointing them from different positions like they do in the videos and look at the effect they achieve.

Take a ton of digital snaps and see how they look.

They call it painting with light for a reason.

 

[Chris152]

The above should get you closer to an accurate colour rendition but do be aware that different screens/monitors may show a different rendition due to their different calibrations.

This is the biggest problem, I think - creating the sought-after digital file means little unless the screens it's to be viewed on are correctly calibrated, and 99% of the ones showing your box photos won't be, which can lead to a lot of variation.