Need pointers for taking good beamshots

[LLCoolBeans]

Dear CPF,

I am very ignorant on the subject of photography. I have a decent digital camera (not a professional SLR mind you, but a good-quality Sony) that has a point ans shoot mode but allows me to set all sorts of settings manually. I made some crude attempts at taking beamshots, but no success. The photo never looks anything like what I am seeing with my eyes. This is not the fault of the camera, I'm sure it's my poor photography skills.

Can someone give me a few pointers on how to take better beamshots?

 

[ToeMoss]

A lot of modern cameras allow for "bracketing" exposures. If your camera has that ability, take a beamshot, check the results and set you camera to the settings that produced the best results.
There's not going to be one single best F-stop, shutter speed for all beamshots, there's just too many variables, just experiment to find the best for the light your trying to capture in the environment your taking the shots.

 

[Armed_Forces]

Whatever you do read up and learn about white balance!

This is the basis/starting point for achieving color accuracy. Relying on an "auto" setting is a crapshoot at best and this is the number one reason we have such a problem with color rendering on this site (IMHO). Setting up your camera with a manual calibrated white balance will ensure accurate and repeatable results. Relying on any sort of "eyeball" calibration and photoshop editing is introducing human error and bias into the equation. What everybody seems to forget is that everything in your production chain must be calibrated for their respective color space! What you see on your monitor may or may not be anything like what the next person is seeing and so on. With the preponderance of all the "wide gamut" monitors being sold in the past few years, and the typical gullible/uniformed consumer, things are just ridiculous because of the over saturation of normal sRGB images. 2 centavos worth, adios.

 

[jumpstat]

Use of supports for the camera ie tripods is also important for clear pictures. Use bracketing if available on your camera. Take a series of shots until you get the best representation of the subject on hand.

 

[DM51]

Beamshots are of limited value unless they are comparisons between one light and another. This means you need:

1. both lights to be in the same shot
or
2. a camera with manual exposure facility, so you can use the same aperture and shutter speed settings for both (or all) shots.

I favor #2 above, as quite often it is helpful to compare a number of different lights.

As to white balance, the same manual (not auto) setting should be used for all shots. It doesn't matter too much whether it is the daylight or incan setting, but it should not be the auto one, or the results could be skewed. If comparing a LED light vs an incan, it is a good idea to take shots of both under daylight w/b and another 2 under incan settings, to give a fairer comparison.