The Camera Never Lies?

At last...my Daylight Table Lamp is here...REJOICE!

Here's my review of the lamp & discoveries I've made over the past week. It's a long post so brace yourselves...

 

The reason I wanted / needed a lamp is that I was struggling to take, what in my mind was, a decent photo of my cards. My card photos seemed either yellowy or greyish where they should be white and the colours in the photo's were not the colours I saw holding the card in front of me. They were muted & had lost their vibrancy. It's not always possible to take photo's outside, the sun's been limited this summer or many a time a gale force wind has put paid to outdoor shots. Don't get me started on indoor lighting & energy-efficient light-bulbs....GRRR! Anyway, I wasn't pleased with the quality of my photo's & assumed poor lighting was to blame.

What I have now discovered is it's NOT just the lighting that was making my photo's a poor quality, it was in fact the camera!!!

Yes folks! The camera DOES lie!!

The photo above was taken with the lamp on. The white background is still grey and that green is NOT the green of the card I used. So I've spent the week trawling the internet, visiting fellow crafter's sites, professional photographers blogs and reading endless specialist photographic tutorials. What I have discovered is that what I was doing was correct but it seems just about everyone puts their photo's through some kind of editing software, such as Photoshop and alike.

Now to me I thought that was cheating... But I was wrong.

This IS what my card looks like in real life. The white card is white, the green card I've used is this fresh, zingy green. I've edited it in Photoscape which is a FREE, easy to use program. Each photo takes approx 30 secs to 'adjust' in the program. Trust me, I've spent hours this week to the point of crying in frustration that I was doing something wrong but it turns out I wasn't. The camera, no matter what the setting, no matter what the lighting DOES lie. It does take a nice photo but it doesn't show the true colours and the only way to do that is through an editing suite of some kind.

If I sent you the card above, the second photo version is what you'd get!

So, to conclude...am I pleased with my Daylight Lamp?

100 % YES!! I work in a corner of the living-room at a desk with my back to the window. My desk is small, despite the size of the lamp it doesn't take up much space and bends to where I need it. When I turned it off the other night & put back on the normal room lamp, everyone moaned about the room going yellow-coloured.

I got it at Amazon 1/2 the price the stores sell it for.

I made my own light-box studio from the packaging (I'm sooooo Blue Peter!)

It does come with a magnifying glass but Mr & Master C have pinched that for starting fires in the garden!

My camera, despite being posh with a million settings, doesn't take a true photo of my cards. Beginning to wonder if I am indeed a tall, slim, leggy blonde with pert boobs! (The camera certainly doesn't show it...let's see if Photoscape reveals the truth.)

The time taken to get photos prepared for blogging is reduced as I don't have to wait for a sunny, wind-free day. I just pop the card in my light-studio, choose a background colour, lamp on, snap, Photoscape...job done.

Happy? You bet I am.

 

Stamp - Moo - Mo's Digital Pencil

Promarkers, Papermania card & flowers

Memory Box Modern Landscape / Gentle Leaf die