Please help me take better pictures... what am i doing wrong?

Ok, I need to take pictures of stuff on a daily basis. Im using a Nikon D5000 camera, with the 18-55 lens.

When im taking pictures of my products, i set them in my matte white finish picture "booth" bassicly its just a two sided piece of aluminum diamond plate, powder coated flat white.

I usually take the pics in the middle of my shop, under my shop lights, with no extra lighting.

Ive messed around with settings, and shutter speed and i cannot seem to get anything right on it all. I find myself shooting most often in the "green" auto feature of the camera.

If i dont use flash, the pictures are soooo freaking dark that you cant adjust the the darkness out of the, and they show a yellowish hue on them, when it looks nothing like that through the lense when i take the picture.

So, i used flash... nomatter how far away i stand or anything, the flash seems too intense, and creates a glare on everything.

Please, someone give me a few pointers of some sort. Are there some settings i can use on the camera to help out more? or do i need some external lighting on the parts?



Heres an example of the picture being too dark. Mind you, when i look through the lense, it looks great and when i preview the pic, i get this:

Then i try to adjust the lightness and darkness in photoshop, and this is the best i can get, which still sucks:

Then, i try some flash.... and get this...

So, i try to keep the shutter open longer to let in more light.... and it gets this:

adjust your aperture so it allows more light in and do not use flash. also is the room your shooting with has florecent lights? you may need to use a shop light or something behind you. try 1/60 to 1/100 shutter speed and play with your iso settings

they look like good pics to me already

Your last pic of the longer shutter speed isnt working for me.

If it were me, I'd set it to manual, put your ISO to 100, close the f-stop pretty small (bigger the number the smaller the "eye" of your camera is) to lengthen the depth of field keeping everything in focus, then adjust the shutter speed to whatever is correctly exposed (may take a couple shots to get it how you want).

Try adjusting your white balance to whatever type of lighting is in your shop. Or in photoshop add a little blue to help balance it out.

First 2 pics look great to me. How many monitors have you viewed these pics on. Your monitor may need some adjusting.

the first one is a little dark, second looks decent but i dont really know what your looking to do, third is to bright for sure. other than the already mentioned, check out www.mycanikon.com or www.froknowsphoto.com for some tips

Make sure you use a tri pod when using any other mode that AUTO. i would try using the P mode on the dial, its called pre program, it automatically selects the best shutter speed and aperture for you. i would also play with your flash settings, try the "rear" setting and see if that helps any

Get a diffuser for your flash.

Maybee i need to adjust my monitor a bit, but to me the first picture looks too dark, and the second pic is a bit lighter, but then it gives off a yellowish hue to the white metal, when in real life its bleach white....

idk, i never thought about my monitor being part of the problem. I will try some of these options today and post pics as well.


thanks for the help!


Taylor

Tripod. Iso 100. Set to shutter priority. Experiment til you get the right amount of light. If still too dark, I'd get a flash you can mount on the camera that you can aim up and diffuse it. Then set to aperture priority of 11. I bet you'll get what you're looking for with one of those methods. But I'd use a tripod with anything that is in low light and not moving. That's my opinion. But I'm just another amateur. But also, everyone seems to love your parts, so your badass quality is what's selling them, not the photo quality. Keep it up. Just takes some practice. At least you have a DSLR.