Correcting uneven lighting of macro photographs

Forum|Forum|5 years ago
November 19, 2020
1 reply
1505 views

I am taking a sequence of macro photos with an identical setup (magnification, lighting etc) - scanning over a print surface in a book in order to composite them (~ 200 photos) into a single image. But the lighting achievable in the arrangement is not even (using LED lamps on goose-necks), creating artefacts in the image. So I want to take an initial macro photo of a white sheet and divide that pixel by pixel into each macro photograph to normalise the lighting before compositing.

There is a lot of useful advice on doing this manually, but an automatic completely reproducable method is required for this application.

Advice gratefully received.

Thank you

Win10 64 bit Adobe Photoshop Version: 22.0.0 20201006.r.35 2020/10/06: 4587a1caa63 x64

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D Fosse

Community Expert

Without seeing your exact setup, I can almost guarantee you that fixing the lights to begin with, will take you fractions of the time you'll spend fixing it later.

Yes, the "white sheet" inverse mask idea sounds intriguing, but it never works out in practice. There are too many nonlinearities and irregularities that will inevitably throw it off, and you'll end up correcting them individually in any case.

If you have uneven lighting, there are two things to do. First, move the lights further away. Second, diffuse the light. Which one (or both) depends on the circumstances.

Assuming a book spread with spine, it often makes good visual sense to use diffused light from "above", that is to say, from the upper edge. That usually looks very natural and gives nice soft shadows. If you can't use flash and a large soft-box, a thin sheet of white fabric will work well. Set the light at approximately 45 degrees angle up. Put a reflector at the bottom edge.

The point is that it always pays off to spend time setting up the lights. It will save you much more time later.

C

CVHManchesterAuthor

Inspiring

Thank you.

I agree about the need to develop the best lighting arrangement to start with. I spent about 2 days canabalising a ring flash by adding a light sleeve to achieve ca 5-10% variation of light distribution across the frame when photographing flat (+/- 0.2 mm the depth of focus required) prints. But that still produces some banding. Unfortunately when dealing with these books which can be opened only ca 120 degrees, the light sleeve fouls the upstanding part of the volume. If I try to open the volume wider, the print curves up and cannot be flattened sufficiently with the magnetic supports I have constructed. Some of the significant data is within 2 mm of the binding. So I have been using the LED lamps at 45 degrees parallel with the spine which by careful placement produces ca 10% variation, but not good enough.

Apparently (as I found online) "More expensive dedicated microscopy cameras such as the Nikon DXM1200 and ProgRes C14 have a function in their image acquisition software known as “white shading correction” to reduce the problem of vignetting. This works by taking a photograph of a blank (white) image and subtracting or dividing it pixel by pixel from the image to be corrected."

You have made me think more laterally - to construct a translucent plate attached to the filter ring of the lens, then illuminated from above. But I still feel that the inability to get illumination through the upstanding cover will increase lighting variation, top to bottom of the frame. So both physical and software adjustments may be needed.

Any ideas?

D Fosse

Community Expert

OK. Sounds like a quite tricky setup. My advice would still be to spend whatever time is needed to get the lights right. I'd probably still go for directional diffused soft light, which will also keep it out of the way of the lens (if you're getting really close).

A vignette is something quite different from uneven lighting. The vignette is in the camera/lens system, not outside it like the lighting is. It's orders of magnitude easier to correct. The problem with uneven lighting is that it's not necessarily a linear adjustment. Usually you need to apply a special curve, and getting that curve right, to cover all the various contrast ratios, is not easy. Not worth the effort, if you ask me.

If you can't open the book fully, you have an additional problem: reflections from the opposite page, now standing upright and acting like a reflector. In those cases I usually put a black cardboard over it, from the spine out.

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