Photography Setups
- Thread starter Texas Bulldog
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Camera is a Canon 50D with kit lens so I can zoom instead of moving the tripod all around, deviating from my normal shooting mode of a prime 50mm/1.4, and I generally stop it down pretty far anyhow to improve DoF. Lighting are two 1200W work lights on stands with parchment paper hanging a couple feet in front of them as a diffuser, another clamp on 100W lamp with parchment paper directly over it acting more as a spot to assuage shadow directly around the subject and a 60W desk lamp at the background to mitigate the larger drop shadow. background is the matte side of a white poster board.
the black pictures are the gloss side of black poster board with just front and side lighting, stopped down and generally longer exposure times.
various other bits of white poster board placed to direct light, or sometimes black pieces set out of frame in front of the subject to mitigate glare.
the only proper piece of photography equipment I have to work with is the camera, everything else is just whatever I can find for little to no cost.
just remembered I snapped a pic with my iPhone..
I also played with some LED lighting using 5000K diodes powered off the 5VDC rail on a computer power supply, plan on replacing my 1200W lamps with large LED arrays in the near future because I'm tired of sweating under those space heaters and burning bits of myself on them.
Continued from another post: http://www.texasguntalk.com/forums/...y/1-handgun-picture-thread-12.html#post207478
Go!
Go!
Texas Bulldog
Active Member
Thanks!... Here is a link of a couple shots i did that night in full size.
The script is just from the program i use. I use "Picasa" its free from google and its how i do all my editing. They also give you 1gig of online storage and its actually a very powerful and STUPID easy to use program. I love it.
Picasa Web Albums - Joe Zepeda - GUns
Texas Bulldog
Active Member
I'll put up a picture of my setup. Its really boring actually. I just use a bounce flash off the ceiling and then picasa to edit the photos.
very easy and very effective i think
very easy and very effective i think
Is that the m&p you got from me? Looks nicer than from when I had it! lol... Good pictures, man. I have a slave flash that I bound off the ceiling or something else white, but my pictures don't turn out quite as nice as yours. Unless I go outside in the sun, lol... It doesn't matter how much light you have, it always seems like you need more.
Man that is no joke!
sometimes it's more fun without all that meddling light to muck up the pictures..
each pan shot consists of between eight and twenty images merged, full resolution jpegs are as large as 36 megs. generally around 8 second exposures, full details listed on Photographs - Michael Killebrew
note: the full resolution shot of the capitol building, furthest bench on the right is a couple making out to a disturbing degree. it wouldn't have been so bad but they both looked like they fell out of the top of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.
each pan shot consists of between eight and twenty images merged, full resolution jpegs are as large as 36 megs. generally around 8 second exposures, full details listed on Photographs - Michael Killebrew
note: the full resolution shot of the capitol building, furthest bench on the right is a couple making out to a disturbing degree. it wouldn't have been so bad but they both looked like they fell out of the top of the ugly tree and hit every branch on the way down.
technically it's easy, you have your f/stop which is the ratio of the focal length to the aperture, which determines the circle of confusion which gives you depth of field. the rest is just painting with light which is rather dyadic, to greatly simplify it. play with monochromatic photos, see that it's just a presence or absence of light, then go from there. ignore all the rules, like the rule of thirds. that just makes them like everyone elses. play with different light sources while being sure to either calibrate it for proper white balance, or throw white balance out the window if it looks better.
I'm still in a heated dispute with my dad over photography being an art or not. he says it is, I say it's a trade. you're taking a picture of what already existed by the hands of someone else, the beauty of the photo is intrinsic to the beauty of the subject.
an awesome gadget that I found for helping with stitched together panoramas is this little three-way bubble level that slides onto the hot shoe. I saw someone using it while traversing the bridge on July 4th to watch fireworks and ordered one from my phone before the show even started. best part is that it's $7.
Amazon.com: Spirit / Bubble Level for Camera - 3 Axis: Camera & Photo
I'm still in a heated dispute with my dad over photography being an art or not. he says it is, I say it's a trade. you're taking a picture of what already existed by the hands of someone else, the beauty of the photo is intrinsic to the beauty of the subject.
an awesome gadget that I found for helping with stitched together panoramas is this little three-way bubble level that slides onto the hot shoe. I saw someone using it while traversing the bridge on July 4th to watch fireworks and ordered one from my phone before the show even started. best part is that it's $7.
Amazon.com: Spirit / Bubble Level for Camera - 3 Axis: Camera & Photo
I think it's an art ... mostly because there's some free reign to the development of the shot. Simply taking a picture is not art in itself, but taking the time to "paint with light" and really work to get the right shot is artistic. It is beyond the scope of normalcy when you setup a shot.
either oblique angles to stretch it diagonally across the frame and draw on aspect to shrink the depth, or multiple exposures stitched together for high-resolution profile pictures.
More light, set your camera to the lowest ISO, smallest aperture (largest f-number), and more light... If you still can't get the detail you want, switch to 35mm. Fine grain 35mm still trumps the best digital.
the problem is generally since they're long and skinny and if it's a side shot that you crop so much it's almost useless. also, larger aperture will yield a sharper picture since you really need no depth on a profile picture. a great many point and shoot cameras don't let you control the aperture size though, even on manual.
If you have the patience, work in layers.
Take several images, each focusing on a different area of your subject. Once all images have been taken, transfer to your computer and open Photoshop and start working on combining all your images so that you have what you want.
This is a trick that most archetechtural (sp) photog's will use for their magazine shots. Most of those beatiful rooms you see that are perfectly lit from front to back and corner to corner are actually many images combined.
this was a real pain. because of the focal position of the reticle in relation to that of the body, even an f/32 wouldn't get them both sharp, so this was two photos, focus manually adjusted between shots, then merged and color corrected for some of the glare. it could use a lot more work by someone who's more well trained in photoshop though, but it's all I have skill and patience for.
Ooh, polarizing filter, I didn't even think of that. I'm not nearly motivated enough to reshoot but I need to keep that in mind in the future. Thanks.
