Thread: Photo Tent

Hi Greg. Your pics are quite small and not so clear. Might just be you camera ?. I was using an Olympus which sucked, then I switched to a Nikon Quick Pic's, which was even worse. Then I got one of these Canon IXUS 200 IS Touch Digital Camera - 12.1 Megapixel - Digital Camera Warehouse Australia and all my photography has improved out of sight. . I forget how much it was, but it was 'not' cheap !. I thinks about $450 ??

Hi Pariss

Its not the photos from the camera - its having to reduce them in size through a 15 year old Kodak program in order to upload them that takes the edge off. The full size photos I took look great. This site doesn't let you upload 'them big uns'

Greg, I read somewhere amongst all the pages when I was researching for my setup, that the best thing to do is turn the flash off, and only use one type of light source.
Check on your camera settings if it has settings for white balance so you can adjust it for flouro light.
Are you using a tripod ? You need to have the camera steady and set your camera to delayed shutter release or use a remote if your camera is equipped with one, otherwise you won't get sharp photos.

I think you need to experiment with changing the size of your photos when you export them, you should be able to get them to take up more of the screen than they do now.

I am not sure about having the lights inside the tent with direct lighting on the pen, most of the info I have seen about light tents, have the lights on the outside and softened as it shines inside . I could be wrong though, I knew nothing about them 2 days ago.

Brad

The original photos turned out well, I thought. It's the conversion on this old Kodak program I have in order to upload them to this website that stuffs up the pics. PM me with your email address and I will send the full pics to you. Then you can give me comments as I am a hopeless photographer. I used the lights inside the tent only because Photo Continental (big camera shop) were using that as one of their photo tents.

Greg

Originally Posted by plantagenon

Hi Pariss

Its not the photos from the camera - its having to reduce them in size through a 15 year old Kodak program in order to upload them that takes the edge off. The full size photos I took look great. This site doesn't let you upload 'them big uns'

Greg, I am using iPhoto now that I have a mac computer, but a few months ago when I had windows, I used a program called Picassa for my photos, it was great and is a free download, you can edit and resize all your pics and have plenty of control on how they end up. It would be a big improvement on what you are using now.

You can still have big looking photos that come in under the size restrictions of this site.

Brad - Geez I forget I had Picassa on my computer. Damn thing that been on here for years ust sitting there as I have only used it for holiday photos. That's how long its been since I had a holiday. I will use it in future. Thanks

Greg

I think the version that I had was Picassa 3, just check that you have the latest version.

Will do. Thanks for the reminder, I had forgotten all about it's abilities. When I get a chance I will redo the photos on Picassa

IMHO, the best light source is the Sun. I take my pics on a white/black/whatever background out the backyard when it's an overcast day, not direct sunlight. Give it a try, even with the light tent if it's a sunny day

Greg,
Turn the light rack around so the lamps face forward, towards the photographer, and make cheap reflectors with white craft or poster board to reflect the light back into the tent.
If you use a tripod, make a "shield" with a hole in it for your camera lens to poke through, this will reflect a lot of light back into the tent also, and get rid of the "glare line" also.
The harsh shadow llines and shadows will dissapear, the light will be more indirect, like sun light on a cloudy day.
I think you spent more on your tent and lamps than I did on my whole set up, although I am a cheap guy who never tosses anything away...like old lamp fixtures and stuff.

Thanks Ed. I will give that a try and post some photos. I was trying to copy the set up they had at the photoshop with the fluro lights facing in to the tent but it did have reflective grey walls. Their lights might also have been different. I got a couple of cheap self contained 8 watt, energy saving fluros with power leads from Beacon Lighting (Aust) and the photo tent from Crazy Sales (online store in Sydney) for $39-95 with 4 backdrops. Crazy Sales - Search=
I think they have a smaller version too which I should have got instead of the bigger one as it takes up too much room when open.

[QUOTE=edblysard;1526705]Greg,
If you use a tripod, make a "shield" with a hole in it for your camera lens to poke through, this will reflect a lot of light back into the tent also, and get rid of the "glare line" also.

Ed, the photo tent has a front cover with velcro attachments and a slot to put the camera lens through.

The resizing of a photo should not affect the image quality unless so severe a compression is applied to the image. My guess is this is what does happen to resize the images to fit forum limits.

Here's what I mean about the "image levels"

The image on the right is the original. The Image histogram for that photo is shown in the inset. The lighting and camera used have compressed the histogram too close together and they need to be stretched. On the left I have moved the small triangular sliders closer to the start and end of the actual image histogram which effectively spreads the histogram out. This makes light colours lighter and dark colours darker so at least the dark brown and black grain can be seen in the second shot. This is a rudimentary pass that should be done with the raw (not final or processed) image and it could be improved further. In Photoshop there is a "Curves" adjustment which allows even more adjustment and it can be used to bring out even more detail in many photos.

Doing this in software is not the best way to do this and the camera and lighting settings should be adjusted to generate as broad a histogram as possible, before the photos are taken. Many cameras will show the histogram in the LCD display and you will often see pro photographers checking this.

I have several commercial light tents and access to 2 other types of tents at work but very rarely use them, because, as Neil says in another thread, light tents are notorious for flattening image levels.

A couple of years ago I made this copy stand and use this with a couple of white card reflectors. This plus a decent camera and lens enables me to spread the levels as required. I use it mainly to photograph some of SWMBO's jewelry projects.

Thanks Bob. I just showed my wife your post (she has a much better camera than me and a better layman's understanding of photography). When I get a bit of time to spare she will set up her camera for me and I will play around with it. Last time I tried to use it I couldn't even work out how to turn the macro on so I went back to my little Fuji S8000.