Thread: New photos with light tent

In an earlier post, Jay H mentioned that Tungsten lights are better than fluorescent for photography. I have looked about, and the only reference I can find is Halogen lights with tungsten filaments, are this type of light the ones he was referring to, or are they special photography lights ?


Edit;;; Ok, googled and all was revealed,
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_tungsten_lighting

Hey Brad, the second pic ( left hand one) is a bit clearer and more aesthetic I reckon. Your pics are really terrific now. Worth all the effort mate.

Thanks Pariss, yeah the LH pic looks much better to my eye.
Getting quality pics of my pens is proving harder than making the pen itself.
With the new camera and some more modifications on the lightbox, I hope to improve a lot more yet.

I have been using my camera on auto-focus, I will try to go manual focus once I get a bit more familiar with it all.
At the moment I am not sure how to tell if the bit I want to focus on, is precisely in focus.
The old slr's with the split circle in the viewfinder was a bit easier to work out.
Even on liveview it seems a bit vague.


Heres another one I have had a bit of a play with.
I was only using the 2 side lights, so the top of the caps are not lit as well as they could be.

Critique is welcome.
Attachment 218760

Getting there

I use 3 lights, 2 side, 1 top. Use 20W CFL globes 4100K colour temperature.
Also sometimes use a small white card or mirror to manually project a highlight on the subject.

Manual focus and aperture priority mode so I select the aperture I want, camera selects shutter speed.
I manually bracket exposures, in the case of a white background + 1/2 +1 + 1 1/2, in the case of a black back ground you would use - bracketing.

Manually focus about 1/3 of the way in to the subject, rule of thumb with depth of field is that you have best focus 1/3 in front of focus spot and 2/3 behind.

Then I select the best exposure and discard the rest, then use Picasa to edit, crop etc.

Cheers Fred, so is it better to do the bracketing ?
So far I been using aperture priority, I can get f32 or f36 aperture, depending on how far I have the lens out. I think shutter speed has been about 1 second.
I have just been adjusting the exposure setting in iPhoto ( I have a couple of other editing programmes including NX 2, and my wife just bought "Aperture" which is the next step up from iPhoto) I used to use Picassa3 on my old computer, but find iPhoto pretty good to use so have stuck with that so far.
I might look into the mirror for a reflector, just been using some white cardboard so far.

The lights I have in at the moment are 20w CFL globes 6500k , I have the white balance set to a preset for that temperature.
I think I will check out some halogen/tungsten lights, if I can get some cheap enough, I will give them a try.

An aperture of F32 or f36, although giving you some more DOF, tends to fall off in sharpness (particularly with a kit lens like you are using), I generally sit around the F16-22.
I have the Canon version of your 18-55 and find it is quite good for general work, but I prefer my Canon 60mm Macro lens, but it is a tad more expensive. I was lucky, picked one up on Ebay at less than half retail.

CFLs of 6500K are on the blue side, 4000-5000 is my preferred spectrum, but not critical.

I have used halogen/tungsten but find they get too hot, especially close to my nylon light tent.

There are more photo editing programs around than one can poke a stick at. If the one you use does the job, then that is the best one to use.

So much to learn. I was tempted to buy just the camera body without the kit lens's and get a dedicated macro, which may just have made it inside my budget (maybe, if I went for the Nikon 60mm macro).
But decided in the end to go this way, which will get me started with better pen photos, and be able to use the camera for general use as well.
I will look for a dedicated macro later on.
The Nikon 80mm macro gets good reviews, but is quite expensive, the 60mm is a lot cheaper, so will probably look for one of those when the time comes.

Edit; In the end I went with the kit lens's after reading so much online in reviews and such, the 18-55 mm was well praised by most.
And it has a pretty good minimum focus distance, close enough to fill the frame with the pen.

I used my 18-55 for quite some time (couple of years?) before I got a 60mm Macro lens and was reasonably happy with the results I got.
The added benefit of the 18-55 is that it can be used for lots of other things, when I travle it sits on the camera most of the time, nice and light, easy to use and gives perfectly acceptableresults.
You can drive from Sydney to Melbourne in a Holden, you don't need a Merc


For pen photography, which isn't really macro work, the 60mm is a better focal length, equivalent to 90mm on a 35mm camera. The 80mm would be equivalent to 120mm on a 35mm camera and you will find that you have to go back further from your pens with that focal length.

I have used the Canon 100mm Macro from a friend and although a brilliant lens, I wouldn't buy one. Not only for the working distance, but it is a very heavy hunk of lens and very expensive.

This would make a good pen photography lens:

Nikon Micro-NIKKOR 55mm f/2.8 Macro Lens | eBay

Manual only, but using AV mode who cares.

Thanks Fred, I had a bit of a look previously but they all seemed to be in the US. I will keep an eye on that one, and put a bid in if it doesn't go too high.

Brad

I won't put my two bobs worth in as I know nothing about still photography. Both my sons-in-law have recently purchased body only cameras (much better quality I am told) and then bought the lenses through EBay. If you want contacts, I will ask them for the addresses.

From my perspective as a rank amateur, those photos you posted were brilliant. The gold in the pens comes up almost as 24ct gold and looks very impressive. The last photo was also brilliant. You are certainly getting there. Background colour in the last photo was better than the earlier ones - just a comment as I see it.

Greg

Originally Posted by Big Shed

An aperture of F32 or f36, although giving you some more DOF, tends to fall off in sharpness (particularly with a kit lens like you are using), I generally sit around the F16-22.

I would be interested to know why you think that. Basic optics suggests the closer the part of the lens used to form the image is to the centre of the lens the less spherical and other aberrations will affect the image. About the only thing I can think of is that longer shutter times are required with smaller apertures which means a chance for external camera vibe and/or object movement but using a remote and tripod photographing pens then this should not be a factor.

Bob, I have tested more lenses than I have had hot dinners (maybe a "slight" exaggeration...) but I used to sell Rodenstock, Vivitar and Soligor lenses as well as a wide range of photographic equipment (importer/wholesaler).

The reason behind sharpness falling off at smaller apertures is due to diffraction within the lens.

Here is one, of many, links for you to see that it is not a figment of my imagination

Diffraction

Each lens has an optimum aperture as far as sharpness is concerned, even at f16-22 most lenses are not at their optimum sharpness.

Edit:

Another link

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tu...fraction.shtml