How to photograph white clothing on white background??

Hi, how can i take a picture of someone wearing white clothing on white background? Every time I try the picture gets dark.
Any suggestions?

Shoot in manual.

In auto, the camera assumes every scene will average out to middle grey, so when you shoot bright scenes, they are underexposed. Set the exposure yourself, with the brightest parts of the scene being just shy of overexposed.

If using a flash set +1 stop flash comp (if your camera is set to 1/3rd stop increments that would be 3 clicks). If that's not bright enough add more. If not using a flash set +1 stop exposure comp. If that's not bright enough add more...

Firstly, we need to understand how your camera decides what exposure to use. All modern cameras have a reflected light meter in them. They read the light reflecting off of the scene. Now, because the camera doesn't know what it's shooting (only how bright it is), it has to make an assumption, and that is that every scene is an average of middle gray. This system will fail when your scene is actually brighter or darker than middle gray. Like in your example, you are shooting a scene that is all white...which is much brighter than middle gray. The camera doesn't know that it's shooting white, only that there is something bright in front of it...so it recommends settings that will make that white look like middle gray...which will be an underexposed image.

In other words, when the camera's meter sees a bight scene, it underexposes...and when it sees a dark scene, it will overexpose. So as the photographer, you need to realize this and compensate for it. So in your case, you would need to dial in some exposure compensation in the positive direction.

That is basic exposure.

You should also consider that if you are shooting white on white, if both the clothes and the background are lit and exposed to white, they may blend into each other in the photo. For this reason, you may actually want to underexpose the clothes just a bit, keeping the background nice and white. This will allow the clothes to stand out or separate from the background.

Beers wrote: Shoot in manual.

In auto, the camera assumes every scene will average out to middle grey, so when you shoot bright scenes, they are underexposed. Set the exposure yourself, with the brightest parts of the scene being just shy of overexposed.

That is probably my issue. I wasn't shooting in manual, I was shooting in aperture mode.

jules wrote: Firstly, we need to understand how your camera decides what exposure to use. All modern cameras have a reflected light meter in them. They read the light reflecting off of the scene. Now, because the camera doesn't know what it's shooting (only how bright it is), it has to make an assumption, and that is that every scene is an average of middle gray. This system will fail when your scene is actually brighter or darker than middle gray. Like in your example, you are shooting a scene that is all white...which is much brighter than middle gray. The camera doesn't know that it's shooting white, only that there is something bright in front of it...so it recommends settings that will make that white look like middle gray...which will be an underexposed image.

In other words, when the camera's meter sees a bight scene, it underexposes...and when it sees a dark scene, it will overexpose. So as the photographer, you need to realize this and compensate for it. So in your case, you would need to dial in some exposure compensation in the positive direction.

That is basic exposure.

You should also consider that if you are shooting white on white, if both the clothes and the background are lit and exposed to white, they may blend into each other in the photo. For this reason, you may actually want to underexpose the clothes just a bit, keeping the background nice and white. This will allow the clothes to stand out or separate from the background.

Thank you. I never knew that camera sees gray. That would explain a lot. So I just need to over expose a tad to shoot white, to come out white. I think I'll be shooting later today, so I'll give it a try.

jules wrote: Firstly, we need to understand how your camera decides what exposure to use. All modern cameras have a reflected light meter in them. They read the light reflecting off of the scene. Now, because the camera doesn't know what it's shooting (only how bright it is), it has to make an assumption, and that is that every scene is an average of middle gray. This system will fail when your scene is actually brighter or darker than middle gray. Like in your example, you are shooting a scene that is all white...which is much brighter than middle gray. The camera doesn't know that it's shooting white, only that there is something bright in front of it...so it recommends settings that will make that white look like middle gray...which will be an underexposed image.

In other words, when the camera's meter sees a bight scene, it underexposes...and when it sees a dark scene, it will overexpose. So as the photographer, you need to realize this and compensate for it. So in your case, you would need to dial in some exposure compensation in the positive direction.

That is basic exposure.

You should also consider that if you are shooting white on white, if both the clothes and the background are lit and exposed to white, they may blend into each other in the photo. For this reason, you may actually want to underexpose the clothes just a bit, keeping the background nice and white. This will allow the clothes to stand out or separate from the background.

This.

Skinny431 wrote: That is probably my issue. I wasn't shooting in manual, I was shooting in aperture mode.

Not that operating in M is difficult, but in any of the auto modes you can adjust what tone the meter is going for using exposure compensation.

If you are using a flash in auto mode (ettl, ittl, etc...) setting the camera to M may cause problems. The flash will continue to underexpose a stop or so, and the camera will expose ambient light fully. If the ambient light isn't white it will cause a color cast. The flash also needs to be told to go for white rather than middle gray using flash compensation or manually setting flash power.