Item I’m photographing gets lighter the closer I am. Help!

[flipSIDE]

Hi all,

I resell clothes. I photograph them using an iPhone 13 pro max, 2 soft boxes on either side and a white wall to hang the clothes on.

The closer I go to the item, the lighter it gets. If I’m doing a close up shot of the detailing, the garments colour will be much lighter than if it were a photo of the full garment.

How can fix this? I’m not sure if it’s the lighting or the camera.

 

[GreenNinja67]

I'd use a proper camera with manual controls as a starting point.

You'll never be able to control light with a phone.

 

[ecoleman]

Download a camera app that lets you set the exposure manually.

Your exposure is changing because the camera is auto exposing the image and that depends on what is in the scene.

I use a great camera app called Reeflex. It's not stupidly expensive and you can set your exposures manually which means they won't change when you move closer.

 

[ecoleman]

You'll never be able to control light with a phone.

That's not true at all.

You can have the most expensive camera in the world but if it's set to auto exposure you are going to have the same problem.

 

[4wd]

It's metering the whole frame so when you have more background (which I assume is lighter colour) it lowers exposure a bit.
Ideally lock it on manual where you want it whether that's a bit darker or lighter

 

[Musicman]

If you're using an iPhone you can adjust and lock the exposure settings

Use iPhone camera tools to set up your shot

Learn how to use camera tools such as the flash, timer, focus and exposure, and more before taking a photo with your iPhone camera.

support.apple.com

Adjust the camera’s focus and exposure

Before you take a photo, the iPhone camera automatically sets the focus and exposure, and face detection balances the exposure across many faces. If you want to manually adjust the focus and exposure, do the following:

1. Open Camera.
2. Tap the screen to show the automatic focus area and exposure setting.
3. Tap where you want to move the focus area.
4. Next to the focus area, drag
   
   up or down to adjust the exposure.
   To lock your manual focus and exposure settings for upcoming shots, touch and hold the focus area until you see AE/AF Lock; tap the screen to unlock settings.

On iPhone 11 and later, you can precisely set and lock the exposure for upcoming shots. Tap

, tap

, then move the slider to adjust the exposure. The exposure locks until the next time you open Camera. To save the exposure control so it’s not reset when you open Camera, go to Settings

> Camera > Preserve Settings, then turn on Exposure Adjustment.