I am selling a ring but need to get some professional looking photos for it first. I have built a lightbox to get the best lighting for the ring but am having trouble finding the proper camera settings. the images appear grey instead of a nice bright white. I am shooting with a Canon T1i with the kit lens 18-55mm. Any thoughts?

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qc3HW01rz1Y The background has to be brighter than the subject.

It sounds like you are just letting the camera choose the exposure. Camera meters are set to assume the scene before them averages out to 18% gray, so if you shoot a white background it will come out gray. The traditional way of dealing with this kind of situation is to set the exposure using an 18% gray card, available from camera stores. With a digital, you can also just experiment with varying amounts of overexposure until you hit on the right setting. Canons only give you 2 stops exposure adjustment in P mode, so if you need more than that you'll have to go to manual.

1. mount cam on tripod if at all possible 2. shoot a custom whitebalance 3. expose to the right, your exposure should be as close to blown highlights as possible.

As others have said, you really need to bump up the exposure compensation - and not let the camera try to average things out.

your camera meter is fooled by the backlight of the light box, and is trying to put that bright white into zone V (middle gray) whereas you want it white with no detail (zone VIII) so you need to bump your exposure compensation to +3