My first 'paid' commission!
Discussion
Woohooo 
Still negotiating, but it looks like Ive got a job from a well known company to photograph 500 products in my light tent.
And Im being paid in kind!!
Nooo, they're not midget nude models 
just small objects. More details when the deal is done, but its a good feeling getting your first deal 
Im going to have to come up with a name for my light tent, the old girl's really been put through her paces recently!
Any suggestions? 
Still negotiating, but it looks like Ive got a job from a well known company to photograph 500 products in my light tent.
And Im being paid in kind!!
Nooo, they're not midget nude models just small objects. More details when the deal is done, but its a good feeling getting your first deal Im going to have to come up with a name for my light tent, the old girl's really been put through her paces recently!
Any suggestions? poah said:
thats ace bob
Cheers Question: Im still not sure why, but sometimes the white background come out a rose colour. Sometimes they are more white.
If different subjects in the light tent are of different colours, some light, some dark etc, does this affect the "metering" or the colour the background will come out in?
I usually shoot F12(ish) with a half a second shutter speed (needed becuase I dont have studio lights yet)
Im still not sure what metering is. TFM talks about it, but doesnt tell you what its for or what it does. Im wondering whether it has anything to do with the variations in the background colour...
Are you shooting RAW or JPEG?
Sounds to me like your White Balance is getting put off occasionally.
Read the manual and work out how to shoot a custom white balance balance shot and fix your white balance.
If you are shooting JPEG you have to get it right at the time of capture, if you shooting RAW then having a reference white shot is still useful for setting the white balance of multiple shots later.
Have a look at the EXIF of a white and a 'rosy' shot and see what the WB colour temperature is on each shot - bet they are different.
Sounds to me like your White Balance is getting put off occasionally.
Read the manual and work out how to shoot a custom white balance balance shot and fix your white balance.
If you are shooting JPEG you have to get it right at the time of capture, if you shooting RAW then having a reference white shot is still useful for setting the white balance of multiple shots later.
Have a look at the EXIF of a white and a 'rosy' shot and see what the WB colour temperature is on each shot - bet they are different.
Bee_Jay said:
Are you shooting RAW or JPEG?
Sounds to me like your White Balance is getting put off occasionally.
Read the manual and work out how to shoot a custom white balance balance shot and fix your white balance.
If you are shooting JPEG you have to get it right at the time of capture, if you shooting RAW then having a reference white shot is still useful for setting the white balance of multiple shots later.
Have a look at the EXIF of a white and a 'rosy' shot and see what the WB colour temperature is on each shot - bet they are different.
Hmmm. Im shooting JPEG but will switch to raw this year (he says) Sounds to me like your White Balance is getting put off occasionally.
Read the manual and work out how to shoot a custom white balance balance shot and fix your white balance.
If you are shooting JPEG you have to get it right at the time of capture, if you shooting RAW then having a reference white shot is still useful for setting the white balance of multiple shots later.
Have a look at the EXIF of a white and a 'rosy' shot and see what the WB colour temperature is on each shot - bet they are different.
Will have to check out the white balance settings in the manual. I guessed that the camera was 100 times more intelligent than me, and would do a better job of setting the white balance itself. Not that I've tried, or have any idea what to do manually, to which I add the light in the tent is the same for each shot.
I'll have a look on the exif for white balance details. What am I looking for, exactly?
Either shoot raw and white balance afterwards, or use the custom white balance before the shot using a white piece of paper for reference. Have a look in the manual for custom whote balance.
Congrats on the work by the way. What light tent do you use and what lights do you use with it?
Congrats on the work by the way. What light tent do you use and what lights do you use with it?
Edited by marctwo on Tuesday 20th June 16:22
its not necessarily white balance. you could be finding that the different colours on your sensor have slightly different points atr which they blow out, with the result that [very]highlights that are caught just between blowing out and not, can pick up a coloured tint. Have a look at some D100 photos to see a clear example.
marctwo said:
Either shoot raw and white balance afterwards, or use the custom white balance before the shot using a white piece of paper for reference. Have a look in the manual for custom whote balance.
Congrats on the work by the way. What light tent do you use and what lights do you use with it?
Cheers. Congrats on the work by the way. What light tent do you use and what lights do you use with it?
Got the 80cm tent from www.stevesphotoshop.co.uk
I use 4 daylight bulbs which glow at 5000k. Shutterspeed is slow, but the setup works fine, and cant be beaten price wise. My 'studio' with the 80cm tent, backgrounds, bulbs etc cost about £50
_dobbo_ said:
Bob, I'm not sure if anyone has mentioned this to you yet...
shoot in RAW!!!!!!
Dont think its been mentioned before, but thanks for the tip shoot in RAW!!!!!! _dobbo_ said:
You could fix these problems in about 2 seconds per picture. Of course that's no substitute for getting it right in the first place, but no-ones perfect.
Just trying to figure out how to get it right in the first place EVERY time, so that I dont have to spend 2 seconds fixing my .jpegs (which are fixed easily enough - the rose tint isnt that bad.) I just wonder how long its going to take to photograph 500 products
With 2-4 shots per product, thats 1-2k photos. Which is 1-2% of my shutters (quoted 100k shots) lifecycle 
Assuming there was little or no setup required, ie chuck objects into tent, shoot, remove... how much would be a fair price for 500+ objects, by the average going rate with a discount factored in for the large volume of work?
Price? No idea, what's your time worth? Based on the quality of what you have posted from your light tent, I'm sure you wont have any complaints about the images, so it's a matter of putting a value on your time.
I do web design during "off hours" when I'm not earning my real living, and I've set a price that I'm willing to work for, any lower and it's not worth the time. Means I've missed on on a couple of jobs I'm not willing to do for pennies, but that suits me!
By the way:
I'd wager you never get anywhere near that 100k marker. You'll have a 1dslmnop MKIV long before that happens!
I do web design during "off hours" when I'm not earning my real living, and I've set a price that I'm willing to work for, any lower and it's not worth the time. Means I've missed on on a couple of jobs I'm not willing to do for pennies, but that suits me!
By the way:
UKBob said:
Which is 1-2% of my shutters (quoted 100k shots) lifecycle
I'd wager you never get anywhere near that 100k marker. You'll have a 1dslmnop MKIV long before that happens!
here is my opinion
1)put a grey card in there (not just a sheet of white paper)at the start and when the size/colour of the objects change substantially then do a custom white/grey/black balance.
2)dont know about shooting raw for 1-2 thousand shots, thats a lot of processing. find out what size and resolution they want and shoot jpeg, as long as you have got the exposure right no problems.
3)you say "Assuming there was little or no setup required, ie chuck objects into tent, shoot, remove", in my experience that never happens. its always "oh could you do this with it as well etc etc" also "we dont have all the products here at the moment" so things arrive in dribs and drabs. so make sure when you sort your pricing structure out you explain the deal!
4)as for pricing well thats up to you, pro's (or so called) bill anything from £200 - £1500 a day depending on their quality and location, i sit around £500 with processing time and cd burning extra. in an hour i would estimate to shoot about 15 - 20 shots although that is tethered to a computer and everything is checked before the final mulit-shot capture, this would only be simple cut-out shots that were all roughly the same size though. just make sure that you take into account any processing that you might have to do if you shoot raw.
hope this is of help
1)put a grey card in there (not just a sheet of white paper)at the start and when the size/colour of the objects change substantially then do a custom white/grey/black balance.
2)dont know about shooting raw for 1-2 thousand shots, thats a lot of processing. find out what size and resolution they want and shoot jpeg, as long as you have got the exposure right no problems.
3)you say "Assuming there was little or no setup required, ie chuck objects into tent, shoot, remove", in my experience that never happens. its always "oh could you do this with it as well etc etc" also "we dont have all the products here at the moment" so things arrive in dribs and drabs. so make sure when you sort your pricing structure out you explain the deal!
4)as for pricing well thats up to you, pro's (or so called) bill anything from £200 - £1500 a day depending on their quality and location, i sit around £500 with processing time and cd burning extra. in an hour i would estimate to shoot about 15 - 20 shots although that is tethered to a computer and everything is checked before the final mulit-shot capture, this would only be simple cut-out shots that were all roughly the same size though. just make sure that you take into account any processing that you might have to do if you shoot raw.
hope this is of help
Edited by andybuk99 on Tuesday 20th June 18:36
shoot teatherd if you can. Better previews and you'll get a feel of what your getting a lot quicker.
Having to adjust white balance after is not a reason to shoot raw imho. Though it may be a safer bet on your first job, bear in mind it's slower to process after.
congrats... and hope it all goes well Bob..
S
Having to adjust white balance after is not a reason to shoot raw imho. Though it may be a safer bet on your first job, bear in mind it's slower to process after.
congrats... and hope it all goes well Bob..
S
te51cle said:
What colour was the object(s) you were shooting that ended up with a colour cast on the background?
I took 80 photos of prawns yesterday, some backgrounds were more rose tinted than others. It didnt seem to matter whether I was zoomed in or out, the rose tinted white background seemed rather random. _dobbo_ said:
Price? No idea, what's your time worth?
Its not about money. I could use all 500 of their products in my stock folio, which will hopefully boost sales. I would do the job for nothing if they said they found another photographer who was willing to work for ten quid, as I want the photos. Plus whatever nominal cash fee we agree will probably be fine. Just curious what photographers rates usually are.
Will have to sort out test shots and shoot on black to avoid having to remove dust spots from a white background. I doubt I could process, clean, sharpen and manually remove imperfections and then keyword all 500 images for my microstock folio for any amount of money.
I'd guess Im looking at 30 hours of taking photos
. And thankfully the product is genuinely chuckable, in the 'bang em into the light tent and shoot' sense. Its a strange deal. But stranger deals have gone down today
flameop said:
shoot teatherd if you can. Better previews and you'll get a feel of what your getting a lot quicker.
Having to adjust white balance after is not a reason to shoot raw imho. Though it may be a safer bet on your first job, bear in mind it's slower to process after.
congrats... and hope it all goes well Bob..
S
Cheers. Having to adjust white balance after is not a reason to shoot raw imho. Though it may be a safer bet on your first job, bear in mind it's slower to process after.
congrats... and hope it all goes well Bob..
S
Tethered? Do you mean on a tripod? I'll reshoot any shots which they are not happy with, and hopefully not kill myself in the process.
It seems you just have to learn to use the custom white balance. As your studio lighting should be consistent, the custom white balance should come out consistent. If you are doing a job for someone, you just have to get it right 100% without any mistakes. Good luck with the job! 
Yes, tethered shooting would be a good idea. (It means hook the camera up to the PC (laptop) so that you can view the images at high res as you shoot)
Yes, tethered shooting would be a good idea. (It means hook the camera up to the PC (laptop) so that you can view the images at high res as you shoot)
Edited by Gemm on Tuesday 20th June 20:20
dcw@pr said:
all this talk of RAW is silly. RAW is about spending less effort on the shot and more on the computer. If you can get it right first time (as of course you can in a studio) then "spending less effort on the shot" becomes a lot less important than spending less time on the computer
hmmm not necessarily, in this case maybe. as i said as long as the shots are nailed with correct exposure etc, jpegs will be fine but and here is the but, if its not you have a lot more latitude with raw files.
going back to the slightly rose coloured background you are trying to explain about, sometimes i get that when i am shooting with my multi-shot digital back. it happens when a flash pack is not upto power, and when it shoots one of the four exposures it gives the image a magenta colour cast in the area of that flash head. just a thought really, are you using flash? if so is it giving a accurate exposure each flash?
I agree, I always shoot RAW, but then most of my work is in changing situations where having the ability to 'save' an important shot is useful, though most stuff I just convert straight to JPEG without changes as I spend a lot of time getting it right first. Shooting RAW however means I also have a very good starting point if I do want to make any changes subsequently, corrective or 'creative'.
However, for Bob's work JPEG would be more than OK.
However, for Bob's work JPEG would be more than OK.
Edited by Bee_Jay on Wednesday 21st June 02:26
Rather then committing to one way or the other why don't you experiment.. shoot some in RAW and see how you get on.. you can change resolution and file size and apply it to all your images for output if you are worried about having to big a file size.
also you can always batch them out as jpegs for your end user..
regarding colour casts.. rose or magenta is classic, its too warm. if you want a grey falloff, try dailing in some blue to balance it in your software. or get it right in the camera which is easier.
I imagine as you have described your shooting kit as quite low budget you may find the lights are wandering with temp. static lighting on for a longtime may have variations. try shooting a colour card or grey card every 10th shot then you can always use it as a reference to balance against. therefore ensuring some consistancy.
funny that.. I find the software will spit the image if there is a slight varation in light. however ...try changing the delay between shots, I use about 2.5 secs giving the pac slightly longer.. may give more chance of a full recycle.
also you can always batch them out as jpegs for your end user..
regarding colour casts.. rose or magenta is classic, its too warm. if you want a grey falloff, try dailing in some blue to balance it in your software. or get it right in the camera which is easier.
I imagine as you have described your shooting kit as quite low budget you may find the lights are wandering with temp. static lighting on for a longtime may have variations. try shooting a colour card or grey card every 10th shot then you can always use it as a reference to balance against. therefore ensuring some consistancy.
andybuk99 said:
going back to the slightly rose coloured background you are trying to explain about, sometimes i get that when i am shooting with my multi-shot digital back. it happens when a flash pack is not upto power, and when it shoots one of the four exposures it gives the image a magenta colour cast in the area of that flash head.
funny that.. I find the software will spit the image if there is a slight varation in light. however ...try changing the delay between shots, I use about 2.5 secs giving the pac slightly longer.. may give more chance of a full recycle.
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