Thread: Photographing your Woodwork pieces – doing it properly

“I take stacks of pictures, and hope that one will be ok”
Pure bloody bollocks! Digital cameras are compounding the folly of this attitude big time. It’s the same as saying “I do my planing blindfold, and hope that something will be flat”. When I was a pro, people used to sometimes ask me if I just took heaps of photos and pick the best ones from the ones that “turned out”. It was my pet hate, and an insult to the skills of a professional.

You have to work towards getting the result that you want. This requires thought, and time. If you take stacks of pics without any consideration, then you will get stacks of lousy pics. Maybe there’ll be one in there that is regarded as acceptable, but only by comparison to the rest of the rubbish.

Use a tripod so that you can frame the picture (as a constant) and make adjustments to the composition (et al). Go back to the viewfinder, check it, change, check it, change. Fine adjustments are often better done whilst looking through the viewfinder, because the perspective will be totally different to the naked eye, as will light reflections.

I rarely take more than one picture of something, unless I want to compare a couple of compositions at my leisure, or if I need to show a couple of different aspects.

Anyone who persists with this attitude will never get any good pics, and will remain frustrated. Sometimes you will have to spend as much as 30 minutes or more getting things right (I’ve spent half a day on many many pics). Better to do that, and be able to get your point across, then to do it quickly and tell us nothing. If you don’t rush your woodwork then don’t rush the pic. If you think about your woodwork then think about the pic.

This same philosophy also applies to “Burst” or “Drive” mode – you are surrendering control to the camera. Henri Cartier-Bresson would be appalled at ”Burst” mode. With people, animals and other such things there is a precise moment to take the photograph – not a tenth of a second before or after. Motor Drives were designed for Sports photographers where the action is fast and furious, and very unpredictable, and that’s pretty much where they belong.

My camera has an insanely annoying delay between depressing the button and firing, so the “precise moment” is never able to be taken. When it comes time to replace it I probably won’t be able to sell it (it’s ten years old) and I am going to take great delight in pounding the POS with a lump hammer.

Edit your work before publication
It is pointless to put up ten pictures when one will do. In fact it’s worse than pointless, it’s counter-productive, and people can tune out to the whole series. I was looking at a post yesterday where there were at least eight pics of the same thing from slightly different viewpoints. Some were out of focus (“soft”), some were poor exposure, and I just couldn’t be fagged going through the whole sequence to find out if one was any good.

You must consider your photographs from the viewer’s point of view. Select the pics that tell the story quickly and efficiently. A writer will not publish the same paragraph in 6 different draught versions. Would you read them all if they did?

Polarising Filters
These are the single most useful accessory in photography. They eliminate (or at least reduce) distracting light reflections, and show the real colour that is in the subject. They will not reduce reflections from metals – to do that the light source has to be polarised as well as using a PF on the lens. They will NOT reduce the reflections from on-camera flash, and work best on reflections that are at 45 degrees. This means that on a curved surface you may not reduce all of the reflection, but it’s all these subtle little things that make a good pic into a great pic.

A good PL will set you back around $100 or so, and you need to be careful about the type required. Many camera light meters are fooled by Linear PLs, and need a Circular PL. They both have the same effect on the reflections, so if you are shooting in manual exposure then it’s no matter.

Be very wary of cheap PL filters as they too often have a cold colour bias (cyan/blue). Nothing will suck the life out of a pic more than this. I used to have a very expensive B+W brand PL for my medium format camera, and it was superb. It was about $600 in the early 90s – as much as a lens.

Manual Exposure
I almost never shoot in Auto, especially these days with a Digital camera where I have immediate check on the pic I’ve just taken. This is particularly useful when you are taking a couple of different compositions under the same lighting conditions. The second composition can easily lead to the light meter being fooled because you may have more/less dark/light areas in the field of view. Your camera’s light meter is calibrated to 50% Grey (like the Grey Card that Nick alluded to in his thread).

On auto, if you point your camera at a totally white subject you will get a completely different exposure combination to a totally black subject, but the two results will be a very similar shade of 50% Grey (it’s actually 50% of Black). This is where shooting on Auto is completely useless and you have to approximate the correct exposure by using Exposure Compensation, if your camera has it. This is very much trial and error. Auto shooting does have it’s place, but not in product photography. Some would say that it’s useful in situations where the light is changing a bit – say when there are clouds around. That’s kinda true, but I would counter that by saying you should be waiting for the right moment when the composition of the clouds and any other variable elements are where you want them anyway.

Manual Focus Control
Too often the autofocus can be fooled by subjects that have no contrast in the focus zone that you want. Furthermore if Depth of Field is limited then the focus point is critical, and may not be within the zone of the camera’s autofocus point. To repeat – you should be on control, especially with product photography.

A fairly simple rule of thumb is that the Depth of Field will extends towards the camera by a third, and away from the camera by two thirds (from the primary focal point). That is to say that if your focal length/aperture combination gives you 30cm of sharp focus then you should manually focus on the 10cm point.

Depth of Field (how much of the subject is in focus relative to the distance from the camera)
There are four things that affect DOF:

1. The focal length of the lens (shorter focal length gives larger DOF)
2. The aperture used (smaller aperture, or bigger number gives larger DOF)
3. The distance of the field from the camera – the greater the distance away the greater the DOF)
4. The size of the format (i.e. how big the sensor is) – and this relates back to the focal length

Given that it’s only immature technology/production cost that keeps digital sensors small, I’m not going to discuss the last of those four points. One day in the not too distant future all/most camera will have a proper 35mm sized sensor. Suffice to say that in film cameras the same focal length and aperture combination will give a very different result from one format size to another.

The notes that I have put after each point above are really all that you need to know about each of them. I did read in the other thread that someone was saying that there is a sweet spot of aperture for the best performance of any given lens, and that’s true. It’s usually around three stops smaller than the maximum aperture of the lens, but specialist lenses can be exceptions to this. For example, the Canon 85mm f1.2L Portrait lens has been designed to be used at f1.2 so that the DOF is miniscule, and focuses our attention on the all important eyes, where a macro lens is better at the narrower apertures because DOF is already restricted by the closeness of the subject to the camera and so smaller apertures are required to get any DOF. Even then there is an exception to this – the Canon 200mm Macro lens has magnificent out-of-focus characteristics where the background is just a smear of colour, and this is particularly useful shooting wildflowers et al where there a sticks and other nasties in the background that just get obliterated by these characteristics.

However, to say that you’ll get a poorer result from stopping right down or opening right up is not necessarily correct, especially with a good quality lens. You will still get a slightly better result from using a middle aperture, but I’d have to say that I don’t think I’ve ever really seen a noticeable difference from any of my Canon or Mamiya lenses.

Remember – everything in photography is a trade off – if you gain one characteristic then you will have lost something else, without fail.

What to do if you can’t get enough Depth of Field?
This is where the miracle of Digital photography comes to the fore, and I’m going to talk mainly from a perspective of posting pictures on the forum (where the maximum width is 800 pixels).

If you are already at minimum aperture, and can’t get the DOF that you want, there is a very nice little work around – move the camera back (still using the same focal length) and crop the pic later, but BEFORE you resize it for posting. To do this you need to shoot at a higher resolution than 800 pixels wide, of course. This works an absolute treat because of the third point above – the greater the distance away the greater the DOF (with the same focal length).

In other words, because you are restricted to 800 pixels wide, you can shoot at (say) 1600 pixels wide, and crop the extraneous part(s) of the pic off and still get the required resolution.

It’s true that you can achieve a greater DOF by moving in closer to the subject with a shorter focal length (but it’s a trade off), but the biggest problem with this is ending up with a wide angled perspective where the subject will get narrower as it recedes from the camera, so that your box with it’s nice parallel sides will look quite ridiculous.

This technique is actually the equivalent of using a smaller sensor (Point 4) which gives a greater DOF.

Light Tents
There is much to say about lighting, and I may cover that separately. Light Tents have already been well documented in Nick’s thread, and I have little to add.

The one thing I would encourage people to do is to forget all the artificial light sources they are using for the tent and take the tent outside and let direct sunlight be the source. This will give you beautiful pearly light that is impossible to create artificially – it’s just got that natural quality to it, and it will make your pics absolutely glow (providing of course that the tent cloth doesn’t put some spin into the colour balance). You could try this by using Tracing Paper instead of cloth as the diffuser – I’ve used this technique for lighting flowers and the result was GORGEOUS light, that looked so natural (coz it was).

Don’t be scared of shadows, but keep them under control. Shadowless lighting will always end up with the product looking as flat as a tack. Shadows are necessary to give some form and 3D to the product.

Zoom Lenses verses Prime Lenses
Waddya want? Convenience or quality? It’s that simple. If you want both, then buy both (which is what I did).

If you are going to have zooms then don’t try to get a one size fits all from wide to Tele. The lens designs are wildly different from wide to Tele, and it is just not possible to design a lens that will do both properly. Get a wide zoom that goes up to only Standard Focal length of 50mm, or at most up to 70mm. Then get a Tele zoom that goes from 70mm up to around 200mm. Above all, have a Prime Macro lens because these are specifically designed for close focus work. I had three Macro lenses (50, 100, 200), and used them all. When I restricted myself to one it was the 100mm.

Zoom lenses that try to be everything will have many inherent flaws such as barrel distortion at the wide end, and chromatic and spherical aberrations at the tele end. It’s a bit like trying to buy one plane that does everything – can’t do anything well.

Thanks Brett. A most insightful introduction to photography for us mugs I've read about half way so far. Will read the rest later.
I appreciate the time spent to share your knowledge. That's what the forum is all about.

...and there was me thinking you just had to press the doohicky on top of the camera

Thanks for the post - lots of useful information there

Hi Brett. I want to make a light tent to go over a fold-up mini-studio thing that I made a while back. Can you suggest what sort of fabric I should use? I use it outdoors.

Thanks for an interesting read
Arron

FF, I think your post is far more suited to the photography section. We have to face reality here that 95 or maybe 99 out of 100 forum members will be using a phone or some sort of P&S camera so most of the technical discussions on aspects of photography you discuss maybe somewhat lost. Maybe a thread on how (in bog basic terms) to make the most of a phone or P&S camera would be more relevant in this forum.

HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OUT OF A PHONE CAMERA

Use it to call through an order for a camera that doesn't make phone calls.



Sorry mate, that was just too hard to resist!

Yeah, I did think long and hard about that Bob, but I really do think that my opening sentence sums it up, in that the Photography forum is far more likely to be visited by people interested in photography, and who would therefore know a fair bit of this stuff already. On the other hand, this choice of forum will hopefully reach some people who aren't actually looking for some help by searching. Furthernore, I think anybody who is interested in photography, and doing it well, will still be drawn to this thread because of the title. After all, the information is there to be put out, so by default the more people that see it the better (I hope that doesn't sound pompous).

LGS, nope, not over yet, but please, bring the applause and gratitude down a bit - it's embarrassing. Actually I was surprised that you were interested, but anybody who surely needs to pick up some tips is very welcome to make +ve contributions to the thread.

NC and Mr B, you are very welcome. Tis a mere drop in the bucket compared to what I have received from the forum.

Arron, pretty much any white cloth will do, as long as it doesn't put a colour into the light, and is fairly translucent. That may sound silly, but there are something like 200 (IIRC) different "whites" out there. The point being that something can look white, especially in comparison to something else beside it, when in fact it has a bit of a colour cast to it. In other words, buy a small piece of cloth and test it for purpose before you buy all of it. Indeed, I would encourage you to try some Tracing Paper (even lunch wrap). It's cheap, and gives a quite beautiful illumination that is halfway between strong sunlight and very diffuse light. The shadow is there, with soft edges, and a nice dark centre giving excellent contrast and 3D. It is one of the reasons why this technique looks so alive.