Thread: Pen Photography-Comments invited (wanted)

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Fred


Fred must be using that New Invisible Minwax Poly for your pen finishing.

Les

All the photos look really washed out

OK, you comedians, they're there now, had some problems with Picasa web albums, they look OK on the web, but when you link to them they go back to the original unedited photo.

So had to do this all over again and put them in Photobucket.

Have been palying with Picasa as a photo editor and it is fairly easy to use, but has some really odd quirks. For instance, I added some text to the 2 photos with and without reflector, shows up in Picasa but when you open them in another editor or upload to Photobucket, the text disappears and so does the cropping

Fred overall the photos look great.

I think the one with the brown stone give a good change to the picture. Only thing I can see with that one is that it is still a bit glary on the left of the stone.

As they say practice will make perfect in getting the right color balance and no glary spots.

I think the brown stone takes the eye away from the pen
I prefer the last two

Originally Posted by Jim Carroll

Fred overall the photos look great.

I think the one with the brown stone give a good change to the picture. Only thing I can see with that one is that it is still a bit glary on the left of the stone.

As they say practice will make perfect in getting the right color balance and no glary spots.

Thanks Jim, yes I agree that there is too much reflection on the stone, hopefully the new light tent will help control this.

It is certainly a lot easier to control exposure and depth of field with this camera than with the "happy snapper".

I really like photo 3 and photo 7. Very clean

I find using a light tent helps control reflections a lot, yeah. My setup is pretty similar I think, just using the light from a window.

http://www.snoove.com/jps1.jpg

http://www.snoove.com/jps2.jpg

http://www.snoove.com/jps3.jpg

http://www.snoove.com/jp1.jpg (I think I may have slightly overexposed it though )

My current setup is very much more primitive than that, as you can see.

Looking forward to receiving the light tent with lights, various backdrops and 2 reflective tables (whiet and black).

The photos look great. However, the top of the nib on most of the images looks over exposed - can't see it clearly on my monitor.

Originally Posted by Jim Carroll

Fred overall the photos look great.

I think the one with the brown stone give a good change to the picture. Only thing I can see with that one is that it is still a bit glary on the left of the stone.

As they say practice will make perfect in getting the right color balance and no glary spots.

although I am no professional with the lens.

I think these are looking very good Fred...if you would like some of my thoughts and comments please read on....if not please feel free to ignore


photo 1...I think this is the best....its sharp, the colour is what i would imagine Ti to look like. And I think the composition is good. However to me the background looks a little more off white (slight pink hue) compared to the others. Do you shoot in RAW ?....if so, a little (I mean tiny) tweak of the white balance may help.

photo 2. This is still pleasant to look at...though to me the Ti looks more like chrome and it looks a bit softer than the first (noticeable on the thread on the end). You can also see the stuff your using to hold pen in place (easy fixed though)

photo 3. same as photo 2

photo 4. The pen does seem to pop more in this one, out of all of them the background is the closest to white and bright as it should be for high key photography ....though the brown stone for some reason doesn't agree with me for this pen....maybe another stone with similar colours would be worth a try

photo 5,6,7 I think 7 is the pick for me from these, just the right amount of shadow and the reflections give it a classy look. though I would still like to see the background more white (slight blue hue).

For what its worth I dont think you can improve the photography much more....I think a little post production would make them pretty much perfect. If they were my photos I would be doing some selective editing on the backgrounds to get them perfect white and maybe a little smart sharpening (sharpening technique using layer masks to help keep noise to a minimum). Most digital photos need some sharpening anyway.....other wise they look pretty bloody good to me

hope this help
BD

Thanks BD, that's exactly the sort of critique I was looking for, very comprehensive. I'll have to watch that Blue-Tack Have edited it out in some of my pics but missed it here.

Hey Fred,

Glad to see some pics from the new gear.

I agree with Brown Dog. The first image has the best exposure, most obvious on the nib. If you shoot in RAW and use DPP, colour correcting is easy when you have a white reference colour. just click on the eye dropper int he tool palette, click on a white spot in the image, and Bob's your uncle!

Isn't it so much more fun & relaxing with proper gear? My old compact, I'd have to spend ages tweaking. Now with the 450D, I tweak just because I can, but almost all shots are presentable straight out the camera.

Russell.