How do I avoid light from white floor washing out contrast ... *solved*

[Boye]

When I want to present products in a scene I often use a white infinite plane to act as a floor. Cast shadows and a little reflection on the floor surface adds to the presence of the objects, I think.
I find, however, that the indirect light coming from the floor tend to wash out the contrast and darkness of dark (black) objects - I mainly design loudspeakers which often are black but end up looking grey and with too much light coming from beneath. (I'll try to upload an image soon to illustrate)

I find Micha's B&D power drill http://www.simulacrum.de/images/B&D2.jpg to be a good example of black remaining black even though the floor is clearly white.

I suspect that reducing the reflectivity of the dark object's material might help - and then compesating by using a suitable HDRI environment map for reflection and turn the multiplier up to achieve higher intensity?

Any hints would be appreciated.

Best regards
Boye

[Boye]

Re: How do I avoid light from white floor washing out contrast ... *solved*

Well it turns out I was attempting a linear workflow unaware that the default settings have changed since the guide "Setting up for linear workflow" was made. I am using version 1.60.16. So all renderings were made with the sRGB button turned on resulting in unsaturated colours and a loss of contrast. A lot of searching and reading on the forum was necessary to clear this up.