Thread: a step forward in photographing my pens

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?

Originally Posted by Treecycle

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.