Leo's on white backgrounds

[Bliss]

I have a very nice cannon kiss SLR 18mp camera but i havnt quite figured out how to take the type of shots i want of my leo's.

I would like to achieve something along the lines of this on gecko daddy - nice and bright with a white background. I have brought myself a small light box but im thinking maybe its down to the lighting now as im still having trouble achieving it? The best ive achieved is in my avatar (no light box) and that was also using a bit of editing in photoshop. Do you use flash too as sometimes the flash washes out some of the colours. So if anyone can explain how to achieve it or show me the correct set up that would be great :main_thumbsup:

 

[katie_]

I always thought about that. Do they photoshop the shadow away?

 

[katie_]

Oh nevermind, they all have shadows.

 

[ElapidSVT]

if you turn off the incandescant lamps in the room, you can eliminate the orange-yellow light you're getting. a ringlight or big softbox will help reduce shadows like in the geckodaddy pics. also using a handheld meter will produce better results when shooting on a white background since the camera meter tries to balance images to 18% gray or the equivalent.

 

[Enigmatic_Reptiles]

To make them look like that you will want good WHITE lighting, correct ISO setting and a little bit of know how while editing. If you notice some of them have a blueish tint to them and you can see where the picture is...this is due to them not wanting to over saturate the image to get a perfect background meanwhile altering the true depiction of their animals. A lot of people use simple programs such as Picasa to do basic editing...but a LOT of people over edit their images and it is very apparent when it is. For us, we don't care quite as much about getting a perfect white background but rather getting the geckos true colors to be portrayed. Too many breeders over saturate their animals and I could only imagine being on the receiving end of a gecko that is enhanced for picture quality...no bueno. Also flash will always wash out colors.

I am bored so I made a simple comparison of how editing can be done.
Out of camera

Lighting the background

Saturation & lighting background

Same and adding shadow depth

In my opinion this is WAY!!!! to much editing and totally unrealistic. This is more of an example of how this gecko really looks. There is background lighting, MINUS saturation and added shadow for depth of colors

 

[Bliss]

Thanks for the replies guys, great info. I havnt had my camera long so just been using the standard settings as its all new to me, but I think i need to invest in some good white lighting then and stop using the flash - think thats where im going wrong. I just want to show of their true colours in a nice clean pic