Is there a good book or article out there for those of us who are camera challenged?<!—-><!—-> <!—->
I’d like to get way better at photographing my projects as I’m building them and for the final product.
Any ideas or suggesting are welcome.<!—-><!—->
Thanks, <!—-><!—->
Duane <!—-><!—->
Replies
Duane,
I'm sorry but I'm self-taught in photography as in woodworking. So I have no books to recommend. A quick trip to the bookstore should show you just how many books there are on the subject.
What I can tell you from my own experience is that lighting is everything. Always shoot on a neutral background, not the sand, not the grass, not the shop floor. Use a cloth backdrop or rolled paper to set your work on. If you're shooting digitally you can see how you're doing immediately.
Work on eliminating shadows with two light sources but tone down these sources by either bouncing them off of white cards or pieces of white foam core. They sell reflectors and hot boxes to diffuse the light but heck my first real photography project I pointed the halogen lights up at some foam core and the light settled nicely down onto my subject.
Keep checking your results. It's amazing what you see in a photograph that you won't see just looking at the piece. That's the beauty of digital. You can see when your background is dirty or creased or the garage door is peeking out into the shot or the piece looks tiny or wrong proportionally.
What you'll find is that learning photography is not a one hour class. Good luck. Gary
Hi DWB,
I'm a semi-pro photographer, and an amateur woodworker.
If you really want to take quality pictures of your stuff, you'll need a couple of things. #1 is a backdrop. You can find these on eBay for relatively cheap that are big enough for modest size furniture. I think I saw some that were about $150. Alternatively, if you have a factory outlet fabric place, you can buy backdrop material there and sew a tube that you can put a wooden stick through.
Next up are lights. The best thing to do is to buy something like a:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/38100-REG/Novatron_2100_2100C_Standard_Flash_Head.html
You just need one, and you'll need a stand to mount it on. You'll also need a special diffuser umbrella ($30).
You'll need a folding reflector and a helper. Finally, you'll need a digital camera that has a hot shoe on it so that you can mount a PC sync (type it in on photo websites) so that you can fire the flash. Make sure that your hot shoe is a 'standard' variety-- some camera types (Canon, IIRC) have a fancy-dancy hot shoe that only works with their flashes. Not helpful.
It will all set you back about $500-- but the pictures you take will look professional.
The only other real way to do it is to use a white background and shoot outside on a partly-cloudy day. The folding reflector helps with this as well. You'll have to figure it out trial-and-error.
But this will get you started. The way to look at it is that photography is a craft as well-- you can't expect perfect results the first time around, just as in woodworking. But those basic tools will take you a long way.
Best,
Chuck
I was doing semi-pro photography for a couple of years. I agree with the above two posters in that the difference between a snap-shot and a professional-looking photo is the lighting. The glass (lenses) has a big effect too, but not as much as the lighting.
I don't have a book to recommend at the moment, but a great website to check out is http://www.fredmiranda.com. I learned vast amounts by reading the forums on that website.
Let us know what kind of camera you have, that can help as far as suggesting lighting gear to go with it.
Just realize that there is a lot to learn, and a lot of practice needed, in order to take really nice photos. Make sure you are prepared to start down that path...
(...this is probably the same path you took to get into woodworking!)
I have a Canon Rebel Xti and have a couple lenses; 28-135mm and a 50mm.
Thanks!
A book you might want to get is "Complete Digital Photograpy" by Ben Long. He talks about light and framing etc but has a good amount on the use of Photoshop to "manipulate" your shots. Getting rid of glare and reflections etc. It is a pretty good book and very helpful.
That camera is capable of taking high quality pictures. It has a hotshoe as well as a trigger output for external flashes. I assume your 50mm is the f1.8, which is a very sharp lens. I would recommend using that one over the lens that came with your camera for your critical work. Using a fixed lens also opens your mind to using more variety in your framing, since you won't beable to constantly zoom to the same framing you are used to using all the time.
If you are interested in improving your lighting, the first thing I would do is get an external flash to attach to your hotshoe, like the Canon 420EX. It will instantly make a big improvement for all of your photos. One trick a lot of folks use when taking indoor shots is to aim the flash at the ceiling or a nearby wall, which then reflects and spreads out the light. A cheap and simple solution.
The next step up would be an external flash unit on a stand that you control with the trigger output of your camera. Personally, I think if you go this route you should get 2 lights instead of one, it gives you much more flexibility. When I shoot portraits I normally have one light with a white shoot-through umbrella providing the main lighting fairly close to the subject, and the second light off to the side or above the subject to provide highlights on the side of the face and/or the hair. With this basic setup you will never have to go to the portrait studio again. Check out http://www.alienbees.com, they have semi-pro lighting packages that are reasonably priced. Also check the For Sale forums of the photo websites, as a lot of photogs seem to enjoy rotating in and out of their equipment with great frequency.
After that you can start to go nuts with different lenses. The Canon "L" series lenses, while expensive, produce very sharp pictures with deep color and contrast, and I highly recommend them if you can afford it. Another good thing about them is that the resale value of those lenses is excellent, so you can often pick up a used one, use it for a couple of years, and sell it for the same as what you paid. With lenses you usually get what you pay for. Your 50mm is an exception to the rule, as it is well-known as being an excellent lens at a bargain price.
Good luck and have fun!
Edited 1/20/2008 3:13 pm ET by EricT
Hi Folks,I'd disagree a little with Eric's advice. If you want to shoot furniture, you really need lighting. Your Canon Rebel is just fine. The lenses you have are just fine. You can use almost any piece of glass if you stop down the lens enough, and you have to do that for depth-of-field. I shoot furniture at f16, which if you're using a lens that's a piece of plastic, you're good to go. Just so you know, you'd be amazed at the optical difference between the lens in a box-recycle camera and the lens on my 4x5 when both are stopped down. Turns out that it's not that much.But you can't do it at all without external lighting. You can buy Photoshop, but it's really GIGO. The great thing about learning to shoot your furniture professionally is that you can shoot your family and get your mother-in-law off your back.Uh, wait, that didn't come out just right- ;-) but you know what I mean.Go tell SWMBO and your mother that you're gonna take pix of the kids that are pro-quality and the sell will go over a lot easier than a new drill. Nothing-- absolutely nothing-- beats a digital camera for portraits with lighting. You just do trial-and-error until you get it right in the LCD.Chuck
Does that differ from my advice? First lights, then lenses.
Hi Eric,A little. One thing that a lot of people don't realize is that when you start pricing out things like Speedlights ($200-$250), they actually cost more than buying a cheap external lamp, or even rounding up old theater lights, which can be found and are cheap. You're even better off using regular round reflector lights with soft floods that you use in the shop, because you can position them, and all the new digital cameras have adjustable white balance to compensate for tungsten lighting. And with a little jury rigging, you can make your own softboxes if you want to save money. A friend and I had a competition to come up with the cheapest lighting scenario for professional portraits. He won-- at about $60 -$40 for the theater light, and he took a closet and painted the inside all white and shot people in the closet. And lenses really don't matter at all. Some of the best photos I've shot have been with a 1937 Tessar (made in 1937). Lenses (wide) just help if you don't have space.The problem with folks getting into interior, lit photography is that they go at it like they would regular photography, where things like lenses matter, and if you don't have a computerized strobe, you blow the shot or spend too much time messing around. However, those things are really not what you need for getting the results you want for taking photos of furniture. With furniture photos, you're really trying to take out the shadows, none of which is very easy with a camera-mounted strobe. Working with studio lighting is a little like hand-cutting dovetails. You can buy fancier, newer stuff, but it won't really help. The best thing to do is to go cheap, and go slow.For those interested in my photography hobby (all outside, landscape stuff-- the internal stuff I do to keep my wife and mother happy), go to:http://www.wildcountry.infoBest,Chuck
Chuck (or Eric) - I am very, very interested in you expanding on a couple of details. You obviously can save me a lot of time experimenting, and probably improve my final results even if I perform my experiments. My camera does not have a hot shoe (Panasonic FZ8, I just couldn't afford the Canon G7) so strobes are awkward (I'd need to use an electronic slave to trigger them) PLUS I prefer seeing the lighting effect on my subject before I shoot. I have a few stands, two 4-bulb light bars (garage sales, $1 w/ photo-flood bulbs), a cheap workshop style aluminum reflector, a couple 65W "daylight" (6500K) fluorescent fixtures, a lot of 50W and 75W incandescent reflector bulbs. I do not have any diffusers, reflector umbrellas, or light boxes. I want to shoot small items (e.g., pocket knife), large items (e.g., rocking chair), and occasionally portraits. It seems appropriate that in this forum I ask about how to shoot the rocking chair. Would you suggest:A primary light source at about 45 degrees at head height and a secondary light source with less illumination at around 45 degrees at belt height on the other side? What type bulbs should I use?I would think a diffuser or reflector would produce a softer and kinder look on portraits, but would there be any benefit on a chair?And, and... I don't even know what to ask... Thank you very much for considering answering these questions.
Chuck -PS - I really like you photographs. After reading your advice here I was surprised to see no indoor photos but your collection suits me well - I'm 62 and still hike, I live in Massachusetts but have hiked, climbed, and skied as far west as Washington. I find it difficult to capture the feel of the majesty of huge trees but you've done it quite well. I was quite enamored of two old growth photos with your son and son/wife and the contorted aspens. Kudos!
Hi GDH2,Well, here's the short answer.#1 concern when using any kind of bulbs that are continuous 'on' (such as any flood) is making sure that whatever you do, you don't catch anything on fire. Floods get hot. So when/if you build any diffuser, you want to make sure that if it's made of flammable material, it can in no way touch a hot bulb.Re: using diffusers-- the goal is to cut out the sharp shadows that can come from right angles to lighting. That's really the goal with photographing furniture.Using off-the-shelf tungsten lighting. I've never done it, but I don't see why not. The best thing to do would be to make sure that you don't mix tungsten and fluorescent lighting, because I suspect (not sure) the result would look 'weird' as they possess two different color temperatures.Going super-cheap, I suspect you could go to the fabric store and buy some silvered fabric in the bargain bin to make a cheap reflector. In fact, I'd bet you could even use aluminum foil on cardboard. I've just never tried it.Re: using light sticks-- you could just get fluorescent bulbs that are daylight-balanced. Go to your local electric supply store and ask specifically for them.I usually start any illumination with 45/45 or greater angles and then work from there.Best of luck-- attached is a shot I took after about 3 minutes of set-up-- a large, White Lightning strobe and one cloth reflector I propped up on a bicycle. The chair, made by me during a class at Michael Dunbar's Windsor Institute, is a lot nicer than the picture! But you get the idea.Best,Chuck
I agree with everything Chuck said. 45/45 sounds like a good start for your light sources. And if you have a good solid tripod, your lights don't have to be super bright. You can just go for a longer exposure time and use your tripod to hold it steady. Probably want to keep the aperture at arounf f8 or f11 in order to keep the whole shot in focus.
The other thing that is important when using just about anything other than sunlight is to make sure your white balance is good. Your camera may have a function that allows you to sample a white area to adjust the white balance on your shots. You can adjust it in Photoshop too, but it's always better to get it right out of the camera when possible.
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