I've been having colour balance and picture problems since forever so following some helpful advice I've tried to see what impact different colour backgrounds have on the final result of my pics.
I used 2x 50W white halogen lamps (£10 each from Homebase (UK)) and a selection of coloured backgrounds. I have a 3.2MP olympus and applied auto colour balance in GIMP (http://www.gimp.org/).
From left to right the backgrounds are:
White
Grey
Grey with a black and white colour reference
Blue marbled card
Grey marbled card
Blue
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/Gi6ers/comp1.jpg)
(http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v655/Gi6ers/comp2.jpg)
The one on the bottom left looks the best to me. Outlaw does all the photography you see on CH. I am sure he might have a few good tips on backgrounds.
Another tip, I use a color scale and a grayscale in order to force the camera to take the full spectrum, plus I have a white reference for white balancing the picture with the photo editing software:
(http://www.cheddarmongers.org/./gallery2/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=3646&g2_GALLERYSID=b25c0b1661089fbb79a1fcfcde182ea9)
Daylight bulbs and having the lights the right distance and angle from the target made a big differance to my photo's.
I could do with a larger lightbox for diorama's like my horror one, so i will build a bigger one and take pictures while doing it.
Um... where's auto colour balance on GIMP? I hate it when people aske questions like that.... I'm being so thick.
I really have no idea what anything means in GIMP... :icon_scratch:
Fabian - http://www.customhobby.com/forum/index.php?topic=208.0 (http://www.customhobby.com/forum/index.php?topic=208.0) Let me know if you get stuck.
If you can find a setting to improve the Shimmer I did that'd be useful!
har de har :icon_razz: