Objects - Macro Subjects On White

OK, I'm not as fit as I was ten years ago. Hey, I'm not as fit as I was last year, so it shouldn't have come as a surprise when I pulled a muscle in the back of my leg when playing football with my son and his mates yesterday. I hobbled home, and have had to put up with much merry mickey-taking from my Wife and the kids, almost all about how I'm "such a drama queen" about such a little thing as pain.

Anyhoo, I'll probably be doing a few "indoors" posts over the next few days, starting with this exercise in shooting some product type shots on a white background.

My Studio!

I used the back of a roll of wrapping paper for my white background, and put a placemat under it where the objects were going to be. The little white reflector you can see was more to block unwanted reflections than help with the light. The main room light was on, and for some of the pictures I added a bedside lamp too.

The main problem with the background was that it was crinkled, and the lights were throwing slight shadows across it, which made processing a little more complicated than with the black back-ground.

I made sure I took a custom white balance of the background before each shot to allow for differences in the lighting, but the real trick is in the photo-editor afterwards. Just like in the black shoot, to make the background really white, I added a levels adjustment layer in Photoshop or Elements, then use the eye-dropper tool to set the white point on the white background. Then it was simply a case of playing around with the contrast, and using a little dodging to lighten up some of the back-grounds.

It has to be said that using this technique, rather than lots of lights, works better on non-white subjects - I tried some shots of a Wii Remote, and in order to get the back-ground white, the remotes highlights blew-out. I could have used local adjustments to sort this out, but this was all about speed, and I'm happy with the shots I got:

Here's Lookin' At You Kid! Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Macro, Aperture Priority, F6.3, 4 Seconds, ISO 64, Focal Length 9.7mm, Supported On Coasters...

With this shot, in Photoshop and Elements, I could set the white point (on the background) and the black point, just under the body of the camera.

Cokin Sepia Filter Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Macro, Aperture Priority, F5.6, 3.2 Seconds, ISO 64, Focal Length 9.7mm, Supported On Coasters...

With all these shots I wanted all of the subject in focus, so I used smaller apertures.


Stone Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Macro, Aperture Priority, F5.6, 3.2 Seconds, ISO 64, Focal Length 6.3mm, Supported On Coasters...

This was the first time I'd really played around with the Dodge Tool in Photoshop. It did a great job in lightening the background back to white where the crinkles in the paper were causing shadows.

Cokin Grad Taken With Fujifilm S5700, Macro, Aperture Priority, F5.6, 3.2 Seconds, ISO 64, Focal Length 9.7mm, Supported On Coasters...

I've cut off the shadow by mistake in this one. Tut tut! You may have noticed that all the crops are square - I tend to use 35mm crops (4x3, 3x4) or the square crop. (Press and hold down the shift button in Photoshop / Elements when using the crop tool).


I enjoyed this little technique exercise, and learned a little more about light and subjects. This set-up worked OK with darker subjects, but lighter ones would probably need a separate light on the background (to prevent shadow) and a light on the subject. Good fun, why not have a go yourself?

Cheers, Rob.