Thread: New photos with light tent

I checked out the levels on this photo and noticed they needed a fair bit of stretching. I played around a bit - the one on the left is the adjusted one - the one on the right is the original. It's marginal which is better as the depth of field is so shallow on this one. When using a light tent on a static object there should be no excuse not to have the entire object in focus.



I also think this pen would look much better with a dark velvet like back ground.

Dunno, both pics look fine to me.

Ironwood,
Take a piece of white craft poster board, cut a small hole about the size of your camera lens and viewfinder, and rig it to the tripod so you can shoot through it...the craft board will reflect enough light to softly light the front of the pen...adding a direct light source will result in a sharp glare/flair line the length of the pen, reflected and indirect light works best.
Great light box by the way....check the temp of your lights, there are "cool white" flourescents that allow you to set your white balance easier, and reproduce colors better.

Hi Bob and Ed, thanks for the feedback and advice.

Bob, to my untrained eye, I cant see too much difference between the 2 pics.
Unfortunately my camera doesnt leave much scope for making many adjustments, even on manual setting I dont have direct control over shutter speed, aperture setting or lens focus. If I had some way to override the shutterspeed to slow it right down, I could perhaps influence the aperture setting that way. One day I might buy a better camera, but for now I am stuck with this one. So I have to try and make the most of it.
I still have one of my old 35mm SLR's, but its not real convenient for this sort of thing.

Ed, thanks for the tip on the reflector card, I will give that a try.
The bulbs I am using at present are warm white, I put these in because I have a whole carton of them that I was given. If it will help things I will buy some cool white bulbs.

While not as neat as yours, the idea is the same.
The cardboard flap on the top front is used to reflect the two shrouded lamps on the sides back on the front of the item being photographed...there are two other cool white lamps in the rear top, with reflectors that direct the light up against the top of the tent.
Indirect or reflected light produces soft shadows, and allows for a little longer shutter speed, which allows for a smaller appature, and allows a deeper or more uniform depth of field.
Warm or hot lamps reflect/produce a lot of red, orange and yellow, cooler lamps allows the green and blue to show better...play with the heat of the lamps, you may find two cool and two warm work best with your camera, or all cool....note I use a netural felt, gray as a base, you can hang different backgrounds for effects.
For me, and this is just my preference, I like to do it all in camera instead of manipulating the photo with the computer, plus, once you get it dialed in, you can pretty much shoot any pen with consistant results.


This was done all in camera, cool flourescent, with the gray felt as a base to reflect light up on the bottom of the shell, but a black background to make the shell and pen stand out...and a blue LED run on a watch battery hiding in the shell as an accent.
Warm lamps made the pink in the shell look orange, and the pen looked orange also, simply switching the lamps to cool white corrected the colors to true.
I do use both, if the pen is a netural or cool color, I will use the warm lamps to add reds, if the pen is "warm" already, cool lamps keep the color true.

Originally Posted by Ironwood

. . .
Unfortunately my camera doesnt leave much scope for making many adjustments, even on manual setting I dont have direct control over shutter speed, aperture setting or lens focus. If I had some way to override the shutterspeed to slow it right down, I could perhaps influence the aperture setting that way. One day I might buy a better camera, but for now I am stuck with this one. So I have to try and make the most of it.
I still have one of my old 35mm SLR's, but its not real convenient for this sort of thing.

I had a closer at all the photos posted and only about the middle 20% of all the photos are in true focus so this appears to be the limit of this camera. That's too bad because it is unlikely you can obtain one of the major benefits of a light tent (ie getting the whole pen in focus) without having aperture control.

The majority of pictures of pens I see posted on this site have major portions of the pens out of focus. I realize that most posters can't tell the difference and some don't care, so be it. It's just my photography teaching coming out

As Bob pointed out, if your camera has a fixed apature, then your depth of field is quite limited, so...
Pose your pens parallel to the camera, instead of on a angle, so the nib and top are the same distance away from the lens.

I think you are doing a great job Iron. The photos have improved out of sight and you have pretty well got it with the limited kit you have. Mine is the untrained eye but I think your background colour needs changing to something darker to bring out the best.

Here a few I did in a very cheap, portable and good light tent.

Don't look at the pens, they are my starters and have been very much used and abused over the past couple of years.





And here is the light tent I used. With just the cameras on board flash. Well these were taken with a Canon 1Dx MkIII and speedlite. I'll get some taken with the wife's point and shoot camera when I can find it.

OK I took this pic using some white cardboard either side of the camera to try and reflect a bit of light onto the front of the pens. I think its a slight improvement. Still not much of a shine though.
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Bob , your explanation of the histogram in Plantagenon's light tent thread was handy. I had a play with it in this photo, mine has a red, green and blue histogram, adjusting the colour levels and exposure, moved them around quite a bit in relation to each other, should I be trying to get them to overlap each other or spread them apart ?

I looked up the specs for my camera, the aperture has a range from f2.8 - f4.9 . On all my pen photos that I take in digital macro, all have an aperture reading of f2.8, the shutter speed has varied to compensate for the light level. There doesn't seem to be much I can do to change this, the more light I add just increases shutter speed, if only there was a way to fix the shutter speed at a long setting then the camera could adjust the aperture to suit, the way I understand it, this would give me a better depth of field.

My camera does have an exposure compensation, is it worth playing around with that, and then fixing it up on the computer.
I just had a quick play with it, just seems to make the photos lighter or darker, couldn't seem to notice any better or worse depth of field.

Hi Ironwood, Photography is a long learning curve and your skills have improved rapidly to my eyes. It appears to me your biggest problem is white balance, your camera may not have this adjustment.Some cameras have a Pre white balance setting so you can sample the colour balance then take your masterpiece. When the background colour changes from shot to shot it is a white balance problem not exposure.
A light tent can be made from a cardboard box with windows covered with tracing paper in the sides and top.
Fluoro lights are terrible for photography, they constantly change colour temperature. tungsten lights are much better. Daylight with a reflector(s) is very good. The main thing is to have the camera set for the light. All the best Jay H

Originally Posted by Ironwood

OK I took this pic using some white cardboard either side of the camera to try and reflect a bit of light onto the front of the pens. I think its a slight improvement. Still not much of a shine though.
Attachment 217343

I think it is a little better and could use even a little more.
Here I have applied the standard levelling correction again

Bob , your explanation of the histogram in Plantagenon's light tent thread was handy. I had a play with it in this photo, mine has a red, green and blue histogram, adjusting the colour levels and exposure, moved them around quite a bit in relation to each other, should I be trying to get them to overlap each other or spread them apart ?

Initially I wouldn't play around with the individual colour levels as it is too easy to get confused. Just use the light/dark levels if you have them. If you don't have this then just try to spread them apart a little at a time. Initially I would do them all the same amount and see what you get. The idea is that every photo usually has some white and some black in it somewhere so the levels should be stretched to create this.

I looked up the specs for my camera, the aperture has a range from f2.8 - f4.9 . On all my pen photos that I take in digital macro, all have an aperture reading of f2.8, the shutter speed has varied to compensate for the light level. There doesn't seem to be much I can do to change this, the more light I add just increases shutter speed, if only there was a way to fix the shutter speed at a long setting then the camera could adjust the aperture to suit, the way I understand it, this would give me a better depth of field.

Unfortunately you will need a camera that does f16 or better. My 100 mm macro does F32.

My camera does have an exposure compensation, is it worth playing around with that, and then fixing it up on the computer.
I just had a quick play with it, just seems to make the photos lighter or darker, couldn't seem to notice any better or worse depth of field.

Unfortunately it won't change the depth of field

Thanks everyone who is replying to this thread with advice and encouragement, your help is much appreciated, even if I haven't answered you directly, I am reading and taking in all comments, thanks.

I took this photo this afternoon, I took the light tent out completely and the lights are shining directly on the pen, I have still used the white cardboard each side of the camera to get a bit more light on the front of the pen. I think it looks better in some respects, but is still a long way off what I would like to achieve. In other areas it is a backwards step.

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I think without a better camera, and more suitable lights, I probably won't make any more huge improvements. I am still getting small gains though, so things are promising.

OK, I am back with a new camera, it is a Nikon D3100, I am using the 18-55mm lens that came with it. Here are a few pics I quickly took once I got the battery charged up.
I am not very familiar with the controls yet, these are all autofocus, aperture priority, set at f36.

I had a bit of a play around with the settings on most of them, not sure what I am supposed to do yet, I just adjusted things till the pens looked about right.
They are all on the same background ( the olive/grey cardboard) I will have to get a few different colours and try them.

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