posted on June 5, 2001 04:25:22 PM new
If you have any photo hints please post them here!
Generally, I sell books, but now I have a lot of glass and china to
photograph. I have a four sided box, bottom, with three sides lined with black velvet. Now, what do I do with lighting? What kind of lights are best and what about flash on the camera. Books are so easy
to photograph but this glass is driving me nuts.
Any suggestions will be much appreciated!!!
I'm using an old mavica camera with halogen lights right now.
posted on June 5, 2001 04:29:24 PM new
I always take mine outside and photograph it in daylight. I prefer that light to indoor lighting. If I can't do that because of the weather then I just put the item in the room with the most light ~I stand pretty far back, zoom in ,use the flash and get a good picture that way.[except for the marking~I get close up for that] No fancy stuff.I also use an old Mavica .
posted on June 5, 2001 04:33:07 PM new
I find that glass is best against a black cloth. I use a northern exposure window, and it shines against the inside southern wall (wall is painted white), so I think it reflects off it. With the glass against the black backdrop, it picks off the curves and etchings well. Normally, I take pics of things against the solid white wall, but not for glass. Outside is better, but if you cant, then a white wall with lots of sunlight will work.
posted on June 5, 2001 04:50:42 PM new
As far as putting them on the web, don't make your photos any greater a resolution then 72 dpi. It just makes the file size needlessly big because monitors don't display greater then 72 dpi anyway.
This is a wonderful site that explains the principles of lighting. It's only drawback is you need to use IE to make it work properly. Got it from Vidpro2 on the EO, quite a while ago...
I do just fine taking all my pics indoors...there's always a problem of some kind with the weather here. Dunno about the box. I just throw a piece of jersey fabric (usually plain white or black) over my couch, arrange the lights, and get good pics. I have an old Mavica too...FD71.
posted on June 5, 2001 05:12:24 PM new
Helen, I've had good luck photographing jewelry indoors - provided I didn't use the flash on my Mavica. I have a bright studio with track lighting and white walls. I just place the objects near the wall to take advantage of as much light as possible. Taking photos outdoors even in the shade on a sunny day has been problematic for me.
posted on June 5, 2001 05:39:18 PM new
Thanks toke for the link. I would really prefer to use the camera indoors so I am interested in that info... you are a great source of info for such a smart elk Thanks!!!
NearTheSea, Thanks so much for that suggestion about the bulbs and the mirror. That's something that I had not thought about. Great idea!!!
Saabsister, Outdoors, Indoors, Everything has been problematic today...
I will try turning off the flash. Wow, so many great ideas. I did try
outdoors several months ago and had a problem with color so I am hoping that I can find an indoor solution. Thanks very much.
posted on June 5, 2001 06:01:15 PM new
I use two four-foot long Full Spectrum Flourescent Lights, rated at 85% of natural. Each light is in a case with a built-in electrical cord for easy plugging and unplugging. I can do all the indoor shots that I want with it.
I place my items on top of white styrofoam. The styrofoam is so white that it does not hurt the color balance. The styrofoam is also not shiney, so the reflected light is more like ambient lighting.
There are 99% or 100% Full Spectrum Flourescent lights, but at that stength, there is less "white" light comes out; e.g., the lights get dimmer, not brighter. The 85% ones are used by those photo labs to color correct their photos.
You have to let the lights warm up a bit, just like you do with incandescent lights. The plasma inside of the tubes takes a while to reach full operating temperature.
If you shoot pix before the lights have a chance to warm up a bit (I usually allow 1 hour), the color balance may get skewed. The reason is that the hotter the plasma gets, the higher up the color spectrum the light output is. So, as it changes temperature, it goes from reds to higher energy blues.
This can be a problem if you have a digital camera that automatally adjusts for color balance. The reason is, that when the camera is ready and color balanced, the plasma gets hotter and the shade turns a bit bluer (?). A digital camera will try to compensate by adding yellow-red. So what happens is in your camera's LCD screen, the picture cycles between red and blue. Fun.
So, if you go this route, just wait an hour and make sure that the room temperature is constant, as that affects the temperature of the plasma. Then, take great indoor pics, even of Sterling Silver jewelry.
posted on June 5, 2001 06:32:23 PM new
I use 4 200 watt tungsten floodlights behind difusion umbrellas. While the tungsten lights give the picture an unusable warm tone (amber) I simply color correct the images with my image program. For me -10 red, +20 blue, +5 green in the color correction removes the amber tone and makes it look like it was taken with natual light. Color balanced lighting can be expensive, but if you are dealing excusively with digital images the color correction is really quite easy. I don't think you'll see the same colors on any two monitors, get as close as you can on your monitor and call it good.
Basically you can take the pictures with regular incandescent bulbs. When you view the pictures you can correct the colors with most image managing programs. Here's one that is very reasonable in price IrfanView (it's freeware.) If you've taken the picture indoors with regular lighting (tungsten/incandescent bulbs) you'll have an amber tone to the pictures. Just open the image with IrfanView, click on "Image", scroll down to "Enhance colors" and you'll see where you can tinker with the tones.
I was able to get a much better price for this baby on eBay by making sure it didn't appear to have jaundice.
posted on June 5, 2001 08:30:52 PM new
I crumbled up aluminum foil and flattened it back out stapled to a couple sheets of cardboard. I use halogen floods indirectly off the foil and it gets rid of the hot spots and shadows from lighting glas directly.
I always try to work off a tripod.
If I have to get close I run the shaft all the way out and put it in from the bottom hanging down.
shooting off the tripod you can zoom in from further away and frame the item the same but
from a distance you can get better depth of field and the front and rear of an object can both be brought into focas better than from too close. All without worrying about shakes.
My Mavica is too old to have flash controll so a double sheet of white paper taped over the flash works good to restrict it.
Thanks!!!
