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23rd June 2012, 10:33 PM #1
a step forward in photographing my pens
While I still have a lot to learn about tuning pens, I would like to think that I've got the basics pretty sorted and can turn out a fairly decent pen. What has always bugged me is that I haven't been able to take a decent photo of them. So inspired by a comment and photo by Peter (aka Penpal) in a thread I started a while ago I've knocked up a rig for taking better pics. It's rough at the moment and needs abit of refinement but it's already made a bit of a difference. The lights are 24 bulb led puck lights, that I use when I'm camping, and have a magnet in the back which allowed me to attach them to metal plates taped to the legs. The fact that they are able to be varied in position allows me to play with the direction of the light falling on the piece to a moderate extent.
So the first pic is the original pic that I posted in the thread mentioned above, the second is taken with the new rig and cleaned up in photoshop (just cropped and sharpened a little really) and the third is the rig. It's not pretty but it seems to do the job.
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23rd June 2012 10:33 PM # ADSGoogle Adsense Advertisement
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24th June 2012, 12:08 AM #2
Nice simple little setup and seems to do the job well. Really brings out the true colours in the wood.
Where do you get the lights from, and what sort of price are they?Dallas
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24th June 2012, 08:46 AM #3
The first ones I got at a disposals store in Ballina and they were about $13. I then found them in my local 2 dollar shop for around $6. They do produce a bluish light so you need to be able to adjust the white balance of the photo, either in the camera itself (as I did) or in photoshop or other post process software.
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24th June 2012, 05:32 PM #4
That is a very neat setup. I wonder if LED lights or bicycle lights would produce a straight white light and get over the need to balance out the blue? I am not much of a photographer and I still have to learn how to take good pictures of my pens. I bought a photo tent from Crazy Sales in Sydney for a few dollars but I still need to get the lights right.
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24th June 2012, 06:26 PM #5GOLD MEMBER
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I bought a full light box setup off ebay for my wife to photograph her jewellery. Shes used it to take pics of my pens and they turn out great!!! It's a pretty big tent, bigger then she needs lol. I didn't take note of the size when o bought it. It came with two proper photography lights with super bright globes. From memory I only paid around $60.
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25th June 2012, 02:19 AM #6Old Fart (my step daughters named me)
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Clever little rig you have made. I still do not have any idea on photo work so I might pinch your idea if that is ok.
Well done.
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25th June 2012, 07:48 AM #7
Wood hacker,
another little tip to give the pictures a boost is to use a non white background. My lady uses those 12inch square scrap booking pages as she has been doing her jewellery (and shoes!) like floody's wife.
Obviously, use subtle patterns and colours so as not to overpower the main subject.
Nice light frame too, I might have to pinch that idea as we have just been using natural light (which is a bit limiting).
Regards
SWK
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25th June 2012, 08:44 PM #8
Feel free to copy to your hearts content Cookie and SWK, although this was just a proof of concept model to test the puck lights. The next version will be more like Penpals setup with cylindrical supports so that I can rotate the lights to be able to vary the lighting even more. It will also be slightly larger so that I can do more than pens as well.
I like the look with the textured background too so I'll investigate that as well.
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