Last edited Mon Jan 5, 2015, 07:11 PM - Edit history (2)

If not try cool white. CFLs are available in a wide range of color temps from 3000 (regular indoor bulbs) to 6000 (daylight balance). I like to use off camera flash with a diffuser but that may be above your equipment level.

You can also build a light box, a cardboard box with "windows" cut in the top and two sides. Cover the windows with translucent paper and park it in the sunlight. For small stuff like jewelry a box 2x2x2 feet should be sufficient.

In the olden days, what you are doing was done with medium or large format cameras and tungsten balanced film with 3200 or 3400K lighting. Light boxes were sometimes used, and other things were tried, but this was the basic way.

Now, assuming you are using a digital camera-- if the camera allows you set it for color temp, you can still get 3000 to 3400K bulbs. Ordinary incandescent light bulbs come in at around 2800K, with halogens higher.

Here are a few, including a daylight balanced one:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?Ntt=photoflood&N=0&InitialSearch=yes&sts=ma&Top+Nav-Search=

250 watts is more for banks of lights on a fashion shoot and may be a lot for your work, although you could have just one and a lot of reflectors set up.

Here's a tiny halogen one that could work:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/243490-REG/eiko_fsb_lamp.html

You'll have to find a socket for it, but that shouldn't be too hard.

Either way, you still might have to do a little color management at the end, or get some balancing filters for the shoot, but it shouldn't be as much as you're dealing with now.

Be very, very careful with fluorescent or LED lighting. In addition to color temperature, which just measures the balance between blue and red, the more important number is the CRI, or Color Rendering Index which goes up to 100-- which is 100% accurate color. Very few LED or fluorescent lights get much higher than around 70 while all incandescents are at about 100. If you find a non-incandescent with a high rating and the color temp you want, that's good, and rare.

Sorry for the delayed response. It's a basic Canon digital camera, and I can't for the life of me recall the model number. Lower end, that's for sure, but it's served us pretty well.

I'll play around with your suggestions to see what I can come up with. I don't mind a little post-processing, because it'll probably be a good deal less than I'm doing now.

It blows my mind that I look at the scene and think "that's white," but my camera says "au contraire, it's urine-yellow." I mean, rationally I know why it turns out that way, but it still makes me blurt out a string of unsavory phrases.

Thanks again.

I can't recall when was the last time I used it (like at least 20-30 years ago.) Still have the original bulbs, and I just tested them. They lit up my dark bedroom brighter than daylight, with a bright white color, but I have no idea what the color-rating is.

You can still find these light-bars online and for quite cheap. You might have to ask around about the color balance of the bulbs, though.

http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html

This is similar to the one I built. Instead of white tissue paper, I used some translucent posterboard I found at the hobby shop, which is much more durable.

As far as the light source goes, a strobe fired off camera is the most versatile. With some white or silver posterboard on the opposite side as a reflector, you only need one light source. I'm not sure what kind of camera you have, but there's all sorts of ways to trigger an off camera strobe. How you do it greatly depends on what kind of camera you have. You can also use just regular light fixtures if you can mount your camera on a tripod and use slow shutter speeds. Virtually any light source can be color corrected either on the camera or in post processing. However, fluorescent light sources can be tricky to color correct, especially with fast shutter speeds because the light changes color over the course of a 1/60th of a second cycle. You really need to use shutter speeds that are 1/30th or slower. Tungsten shop lights work surprisingly well, but will also need to be color corrected. If your light isn't that powerful (such as two table lamps), you'll really need two light sources hitting your subject from different angles to fill in the shadows. You can adjust how much shadow you want by varying the distance of your fill light.

Here's another tip for close ups. If you can put your camera in manual focus mode, run the focus to its closest setting, then vary your camera to subject distance by moving the camera (on a tripod, beanbag, etc.) or moving your subject in and out until precise focus is achieved. This gives your maximum reproduction ratio that your lens is capable of producing.

Here's a project I did with my light box:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/103625975

Love that little thing. I used a few existing lamps, so I'd estimate that my outlay was about $4.00 for tape, a sheet of poster board, a pad of tracing paper and a free cardboard box.

I'm thinking that I'll get much better results if I try the lighting suggested by TreasonousBastard above.

Thanks for the suggestion!

If you use more than one light source, then both should be the same type so that you can color correct back to daylight (or whatever you want).

Halogen shop lights actually work quite well because they generally put out enough light so that you can filter them through your light box and use a reflector on the other side for fill. They also do double duty as a shop light. PAR fixtures also work pretty well and you can use either incandescent or LED bulbs.

If the light from your incandescent bulbs are showing up as yellow in your photos, you just need to set the camera to "incandescent" for its white balance instead of "daylight".

If your background is white, the auto-white-balance feature of the camera should do quite well.

All that said, it is rather easy to get "daylight" bulbs these days.

Using the same lighting setup, then set up a custom white balance based off that. The specifics of doing so are entirely dependent on your camera model; detailed instructions can be found in the manual.

White paper is usually not quite "neutral white" but usually close enough for most people.

I'm lucky in that I have both the card and proper daylight-balanced strobes, so whiteness is the least of my worries...I did pick up many a trick with my old D70 though!

Are 18% grey and come in handy for auto white balancing

I'm genuinely curious - every camera I've ever used does custom WB off something "white", I've only ever used my 18% card for metering.

http://digital-photography-school.com/get-your-white-balance-right-in-seconds-using-grey-card/

I should have guessed modern secret-sauce image processing would be able to get a good WB off the 18% as well. Thing is, for me, Nikon's matrix metering is so damn good I'm usually just shooting the white card instead, but that's definitely a super handy trick for postprocessing my scans!

Edit, she has a cool card with pure white on the front so she could just select the white bit, but it's still quite useful regardless.

is that they are designed for exposure metering, not white balance metering. The cards are not usually a neutral gray. However, they can be better than nothing in a tricky lighting situation.

A white-balance card is what one really wants.

That said, anything that is a shade of gray (white-gray-black) can be used to meter your white balance. It is just a matter of how far off the gray item is from being a neutral gray.

I have white posterboard--will that work?

It will probably get you a 95-99% accurate color, which is close enough for most people.

The catch is that you need it to be in the exact same light as your true subject being photographed.

Go to any drugstore that has a one-hour photo department and buy (if the clerk won't just give you one) a little scrap of unexposed, processed photo paper. A 4x6 sheet is just what the doctor ordered. You really don't want a piece of unprocessed color paper because it's got a green coating and it'll turn black eventually, but a scrap of processed paper is very white and will last a long time. I have one taped to the inside of my scanner's lid to use as a calibration target.

I sometime need to take pictures in a large meeting room, lit by mercury vapor lights. Needles to say everything comes out green. I have a Canon t3i, which normally does color balance quite well, everywhere but there.
What I do is try to make sure something white in in the picture, like a piece pf paper, or someone's shirt. The tables are "white", so that mostly works too. It doesn't take much white in the picture. Just enough for a reference somewhere.
Then I use Photoscape's White Balance feature, which is an easy couple of clicks.

I know some of the older digital cameras needed to have the white balance set on a white card or translucent filter that came with the camera.