There are two issues here to separate. White balance adjustments make your whites white, rather than yellowish or bluish. However, when your whites come out gray (colorless), the problem is underexposure.

When you changed the ISO, you were simply changing the exposure. Your ISO 100 shots are underexposed, your ISO 400 shots are overexposed.

Photographing animals on white backgrounds is very tricky. Black backgrounds are equally tricky. The problem is that the camera tries to make everything a middle gray tone. So whites get underexposed and turn out gray and blacks get overexposed and washed out.

The way to solve this is to figure out the correct exposure and set the camera manually. You can do this by experimenting with the empty setup. Take a series of exposures and then check the exposure on the computer for the blank background you want without it being too dark or too light.

If you then set you camera to manual and use that exposure, you should get the results you want.

Of course, setting the background to white or black in the Gimp is just as easy. Shoot the pictures in RAW and then adjust the exposure in the GIMP to get the background to become unobtrusive.

When using a black or white background, it is easier to get that featureless effect if you use a flat white or flat black surface rather than a reflective/shiny one.

Here's a shot I took on a black table. I adjusted the background in Photoshop to make it completely black by adjusting the exposure.


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Chris Harrison
San Antonio, Texas

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