Future's so bright I gotta wear shades

I've taken a gazillion pictures using my point and shoot camera. I've spent countless hours editing photos using Shutterfly, Picasa and GIMP (all free photo editing software downloaded from the Internet).  I've built my own photo box twice (really 3 times as I'm on iteration 2 of the current one).  And I still was NOT HAPPY with the strange colors and glare off my pretty little fire babies (beads).  

This is my current photo box, it's kind of hard to see with the blinding amount of light in there.  I literally wear shades when working in it, otherwise I get snow blind, LOL.  The box is made of foam core board from Staples, masking tape and 4 cheap clamp-on lights from Home Depot with "daylight" fluorescent bulbs.

Tonight I made a command decision that I would learn to use the white balance on my Nikon D-50, because I could and would master it's insanely complicated menu's, I'm an engineer after all, DAMMIT and no camera is gonna get the best of me!!

ROUND 1:
 This is the D-50 using a normal set up in the photo box with auto set White Balance. Note the slightly greenish cast to the background (Kosher salt crystals).

Nikon D-50 Auto White Balance in photo box

I like the GIMP software, but it's a GINORMOUS application and really slows my computer down so the the only feature I've really used so far is Levels.  Levels allows you to use an eyedropper to find a spot in the photo that's supposed to be white, the software then auto-corrects the color based on that selection (you can do this for black too, but these photos had no good matte black). The photo below is the same as above after Gimp level set.

Nikon D-50 Auto White Balance in photo box with Gimp Levels set

ROUND 2:
The last one above wasn't too bad, but I thought it could still be better using the D50 preset White Balance. After all that's the whole objective of tonight's little exercise.  This is after messing about with the camera for about 10 minutes trying to get it to set the white balance by putting a piece of white interfacing (fabric stuff, but kind of stiff and with a nice matte finish, shiny would be bad in this situation I think).
Note that the salt looks better, the greenish cast seen in the first photo is gone now.

Nikon D-50 Preset White Balance in photo box

 same as above after using Gimp to set the Levels

Nikon D-50 Preset White Balance in photo box with Gimp Levels set

definitely better (probably a little too bright, but that's a lesson for another day)

FINAL ROUND:
and for tonight's final exam; I used a card with a white side (coffee filter for the matte finish) and a black side (fabric scrap) so I could use the Gimp Levels to set both light and dark.  You can just see the edge of the card in the top of the photo, for actual posting purposes I would crop this out.

Nikon D-50 Preset White Balance in photo tent with Gimp Levels set for both white and black

And that concludes my photo experimentation for tonight.  Next time I want to see what can be done to reduce the light glare with some better diffusion, which will cut the overall light to the subject and may necessitate yet more exploration of the D-50 to figure out the best ISO, aperture, exposure adjustment and/or shutter speed.  Who knew that making glass beads would also require a major investment in upping the photo skills?