Trying small studio .....

[Frog]

Please move to studio and lighting or help forums

Taking shots of charms for this site http://bookjewelry.com/.

They wanted me to edit the shots they took but I did that last year and it was a pia so I said why not let me take the pics, thinking I'd learned so much here, it wouldn't be hard though I've never shot with lighting and shadow box set up before.
They said ok, brought me a home made shadow box, and two lights with lites they'd had a hard time finding and only last 500 hours, I guess.
I tried setting the lights so I'd get no shadows but got too fussy maybe as I spent most of a day just doing that. Here's a link to the set up I ended up with Light help . Asked for ideas there but haven't had a response yet.
Thought I had it last night but when I went to shoot today, it didn't seem right. I decided to pull out my flash and see what would happen with it and got better results than I did with the two lights they had.
My big questions are about white balance and shooting metallic objects.
I've had the white balance on auto and incadescent with not good results. Also exposing for the white bg over exposes the metal charms and keep getting blown highlights.
When I started using the flash, I set the wb to flash and the shot showed a white bg in my lcd but when I loaded it on the computer, it came out a dingy brownish color.
I'd shot in raw so I was eventually able to get a white bg fiddling with different white balance settings and exposure but wish I didn't have to fiddle at all.
The flash is camera mounted, sb800, with a Gary Fong diffuser.

Any and all suggestions about white balance and exposure will be appreciated.
Below is the best I've got so far,(except for positioning which I'm going to change).
I printed a copy and took it to her and she thought it was just fine, though obviously I haven't eliminated all the shadows.

Meant to put this in help forum. Please move!

[Grandpaw]

Frog, I have never tried this but I think that if you placed the objects on a piece of glass with a light shinning on the background several inches below that the shadows would be eliminated. This would be like taking a portrait with someone against the wall and the moving them away from the background and putting a light on the background for separation. As far as the WB I would do a manual white balance with a piece of white paper and go from there. Setting the WB shouldn't have anything to do with making something blown out, Jeff

[Photo-John]

Might be better to post this in the Studio and Lighting forum. It's more of a technical post than a classical critique post.

[gahspidy]

These don't look bad, frog. when you shoot with RAW, you will always have to fiddle.
Might be that your exposures were under, which will have the white looking gray or even dingy like you described.
The flash setting for WB is a good place to start, and actually should do the trick without fiddling once exposure is correct. I would set the camera to manual exposure and set up a shutter speed of about 1/160, an aperture of about 8.0 and 100 iso to eliminate any of the ambient lighting that might be interfering with your color balance.
then take a shot with the flash on and look at your histogram to see that your line goes just up to the whites which wold mean your background should be getting good white. If not, increse the output of the flash or go up to 200 iso, etc. i would rather increase flash output to keep that ambient light in check.
Then place your items in the box and focus on them, and see what you get.
It might be a good idea to experiment placing the flash off camera and moving it around, perhaps aimed at one side of the box, the rear wall of the box, etc so to avoid hitting the objects directly. the diffuser will help, but even so you should want an indirect light with more diffusion for those shiny items.
This shot is not bad, thogh frog.

[Frog]

LORD! This turned out to be way more work than I thought it would be.

I gave up on getting the best white balance and just adjusted it in raw. I kept getting either gray or orange bg no matter what I adjusted but it was just a matter of cooling it some when they came out orange and that worked better than warming the gray ones.
So, finally got them done today and put them on a disc and took them over to her.
She said,"Those look great! You can split them can't you?" HUH!

There are 50+ pairs of charms. One silver and one gold. She brought them to me in pairs and it never even occured to me that she wanted them shot separatly. One gold charm pic and one silver charm pic.
Did some fiddling at home and worked out that I just need to crop one out which can be done in some cases with enough room and then I go back and crop out the other one.
Some are too close and I can't make a crop without getting some of the unwanted one in but I just clone that part out.
This weekend, I'm going to make my own lightbox. Is there something that can be used other than poster board or foamboard? That stuff gets scratches on it if you breath hard on it.
Here's one of the ones I did

[Shebang]

Uh oh. I copied you and got foam board. I'm following you here to watch and learn. Got my camera back today, so I'm back to the same task you're tackling.

[jetrim]

Try putting a piece of regular glass, anti reflective glass (like in some picture frames), clear or opaque white plexi above the foam core/posterboard. White plexi is what I use and it seems to work well, but is harder to find and more expensive if you're not in the trades. The advantage it has over the other choices is that you can put a head underneath it and get that super white high key background. You should be able to get a piece of glass or clear plexi cheap at any hardware or Lowes/Depot type store.

[gahspidy]

Pretty descent, frog. Good job cropping them out.
Not sure if your willing to spend a bit of money to get a good little set up for doing these type stuff now and in the future, but these portable light tents are great and very simple.
http://www.adorama.com/SVLB20.html