45 shots of almost complete darkness, but I managed to save a couple by putting them into Photoshop and playing with the lightness and contrast settings. First off need to figure out why things were so dark. I assume you were using something like full manual setting in order to experiment with different light and contrast? How were you determining your "average" exposure? Seems like this was incorrect if everything was too dark. The brightness range is then determined by the placement (distance) and wattage of the lights on either side of the object. Contrast depends mostly on the "broadness" or fuzziness of the light sources. There is a pretty good tutorial on lighting in the --learning center--. As you have it, with pre-photoshop images very dark, all the levels captured are squashed down at the dark end. The photoshopping just expands everything, also amplifying the noise. This is about the worst condition, as the CCD or CMOS sensors in digital cameras tend to be noisiest at the dark ranges. Or, doruksal said, use the noise creatively.