Advise on product photographing

[srider]

te51cle said:

srider said: Filters won't work with a digital camera set to Auto White Balance, the camera will just try to correct for them. Agreed, but judging by the before and after photos at the beginning of this thread I don't think the auto white balance is doing what it should. A blue filter would help get rid of that orange tint without so much post processing work being necessary.

No, on auto white balance it won't work. The AWB looks at the colours in the image as seen through the lens, so by adding a coloured filter, it'll just correct for that too. It would work with the camera set to a predefined WB, but using custom white balance is still the best option.

Incidentally, it can be done on the E10, there is a white balance button on the front, which you use to take a pics of a white piece of paper, which then lets the camera determine the exact WB to use.

[dcw@pr]

You are missing a method which is very easy, and takes almost no time. First you need to buy a grey card, such as this one - Jessops . Then take the photo with the grey card in the background, some where that when you crop the photo later it will not be in the way. Take the photo, do not worry about the white balance, but try to get it reasonably close.

Next, open the photo in photoshop. Go to levels (command/ctrl L). You will see in the bottom right three little ink dropper symbols. One white, one black and one grey. Click on the grey one. Then, while the levels box is still open, click on the grey card in the photo. This will set the neutral grey to the same as the card, which should remove all the colour castes.

Hope this helps