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Thread: Woodworking product photography
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15th April 2016, 06:49 PM #1GOLD MEMBER
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Woodworking product photography
It might be time, I thought, to show the photography rig I use for woodworking photography (or any other smallish item, I guess).
This is what I use. There is a pop-up light tent, which came with a bunch of opaque backgrounds in different colours - I only use the black one. There are 5 lights. The overhead light, and 4 desktop versions on tripods. Those blue things are just door snakes filled with sand - to stop me knocking the little tripods over. The lights are compact flourescents - colour balanced at 5500 kelvin for photography. In this configuration there are 3 at 115 watts, and 2 at 85 watts. I have an extra 175 watts of lights which I can set up in clip-ons (not shown) but unfortunately they don't open wide enough to fit onto the edge of that table.
Altogether, it might sound like quite a bit of light (690 watts of compact flurescent lights) but its not really enough to give me the sharpness and depth of field I would like.
For small objects, I can use the light tent. For larger objects (ie a chair) I can set up without the light tent and to be honest it really makes very little difference.
This stuff might look expensive but actually I bought it on-line from Asia and its very cheap. Its far from professional quality, but nothing has broken or let me down so I would classify it as OK for an occasional user. Probably the only part of the rig which is really second-rate is the backgrounds. They act like a magnet for pet hairs and every bit of dust in the neighbourhood, and because they are low quality they are a little too evident in the photos. They need deeper, non-reflective flocking - or something.
I use a Nikon D7000 which has two programmable modes. One I have set up for small stuff in the light tent, the other for larger items without the light tent. My intention here was to get the process so totally repeatable that, given standardised lighting setups, I could just put the camera into preset mode and just snap away, but it hasn't happened yet. It still seems to require endless frigging with settings on the camera, and then further work on photoshop to get the result I want. Why it cannot deliver me consistency in colour balance I cannot understand.
I'm still learning this stuff. I'm posting it here to start some discussion and to see what other people who have gone down this route are using.
cheers
Arron
photorig.JPGApologies for unnoticed autocomplete errors.
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15th April 2016 06:49 PM # ADSGoogle Adsense Advertisement
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19th May 2016, 09:26 PM #2
Hi Arron, have you done a custom white balance setting for this setup ? If so you should be able to set your cameras white balance to your custom setting when using your light tent, results should be consistent.
If you are using it in a room with different types of lights on as well, it will give you trouble. Best results will be if you can block, or eliminate all other sources of light.Brad.
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19th May 2016, 09:36 PM #3
Fluorescents are not the best light source either. They have bits missing from the spectrum (important bits for cameras). You may get better results from LED globes - even though the colour temp may be lower, AFAIK the are a more continuous spectrum. I find that the LED floodlights in my shed (3200°K IIRC) give a pretty good result when I set the camera to tungsten lighting. Not as good as good old sunlight, but not too bad.
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19th May 2016, 09:37 PM #4GOLD MEMBER
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All done many times, and still no consistency. But thank you for the response anyway Brad.
I always wait for night and eliminate all other artificial light, as you can see in the photo.Apologies for unnoticed autocomplete errors.
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19th May 2016, 09:40 PM #5GOLD MEMBER
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19th May 2016, 09:48 PM #6
Can you post a sample photo so we can see what results you are getting, need to know your camera settings as well.
Are your using a tripod and shutter timer or remote shutter release?
I just changed my lights in my setup over to led down lights , they provide pretty good lighting, but need good diffusion to get good results.
I will post some pics of my setup tomorrow night.Brad.
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19th May 2016, 09:51 PM #7GOLD MEMBER
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I should also have mentioned that I sometimes wonder if the camera is at fault. I'm using a Nikon D7000 - but sometimes when I get really fed up in this or other photographic tasks I revert to my old Nikon D80 which is a model of consistency in comparison.
I don't think I use this enough to justify going out and buying a new led setup.Apologies for unnoticed autocomplete errors.
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19th May 2016, 09:51 PM #8
Take a pic of something colourful (preferably a colour strip reference card) using direct sunlight, then do it under the artificial lighting with the program you have. If the lights are any good then the colours should be reasonably close to each other. It might also be handy to using some halogens or LEDs (after white balancing the camera to those sources) to see what you get. Even if you can't use all five light sources.
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19th May 2016, 09:52 PM #9
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19th May 2016, 09:56 PM #10GOLD MEMBER
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I just remembered I have some of those already - bought for another purpose and never used. They are just ordinary led bulbs, not photographic stuff. Does it make a difference ?
Apologies for unnoticed autocomplete errors.
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19th May 2016, 09:59 PM #11GOLD MEMBER
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19th May 2016, 10:01 PM #12
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19th May 2016, 10:04 PM #13GOLD MEMBER
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19th May 2016, 10:15 PM #14
I'll see if I can explain it a bit better. Back in the day I used to make light boxes for transparency inspection. All the E6 labs in Sydney had them, along with various other people who used lightboxes. Initially I was using a fluoro tube called Tru-Lights which were 5500°k, but I still felt they were a little cold. Then Philips released their Daylight tubes which I think were 5000°K. In any case they were really good for checking trannies, and many times cheaper than Tru-Lights at......$55 per tube (mid 1980s).
However, whilst they looked really natural to the eye, if they were used to illuminate a photographic subject then the result was green crap. Even the FL-Day filters (purplish) didn't properly correct the colour, simply because there are bits missing from the spectrum.
Fluoros also pulse, so it's possible with the right shutter speed to get a black pic taken in between the pulses, although that's pretty unlikely given that the shutter speed has to be pretty slow (as you have found out).
Halogens are a continuous spectrum I believe. Not quite sure about the spectrum of LEDs, but they are certainly a lot closer to halogens/tungsten.
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19th May 2016, 10:16 PM #15GOLD MEMBER
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Reading the program settings - mode is manual, ISO is 400, F8, Speed 1/180 sec, AF-S, whitebalance = 5260k, I dial in a bit of bias towards red/yellow.
Naturlly I tweak these a bit as I go.
Usually hand-held. Sometimes tripod with manual release. Whichever is required for adequate sharpness.Apologies for unnoticed autocomplete errors.
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