Photography Nerd Question

If I were going to do this, I would buy one of the many lighting kits sold for eBay-type merchants -- i.e., for small product photography. I would photograph the item against a contrasting solid color background then use Photoshop to drop out the background entirely.

Warren
 
Brent":10pyh9pr said:
I have the exact one pictured :lol:
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OK, then go to the site, right click the picture and save it as a .gif file, Brent.

You owe me a tall cold bottle of Pat Anderson's Best 'cause I saved you the cost of a camera and software.

Oh, you said "pictures" not picture. Oh well. Warren's probably got the best solution.


Don
 
Warren's suggestion is the fast easy way. If you want to make it not look cut out, small product photography is pretty simple:

A seamless background, could be paper.

One light source, generally off to a 45º angle from the product.

A reflector to bounce some light into the shadow area.

It starts getting more complicated when you have glass or shiny objects in there... but if you're looking to sell on eBay or CL, that really isn't much of an issue.

That's the basics. You can add additional lights to highlight edges, backlight, or open shadows, but it should still look like there's one light source. The tell-tale sign of an amateur product shot is more than one shadow. It's unnatural to your mind/eye.

Small product photo is like sailing... you can learn to do it in an afternoon and spend the rest of your life perfecting it.

Best wishes,
Jim B.
 
Brent":3mecxxht said:
I will be staying in Gaslight area in May for the ASM meeting
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Gaslamp district? Neat area now that it's been renovated. I'll definitely take you up on that offer, Brent. It won't be Pat's best because they don't know how good it is down here, so we'll have to improvise.

Don
 
Jim,
How about a soft box? I get somewhat of the same effect by using bounce, off a home made mat reflector, which fits on top of the flash. Also gets the flash much further off the camera. The bouce deflecter is made of two layers of 1/8" foam with stickey back from WalMart. The reflector side is mat white, the back and strap around the flash are black stickey back foam--put back to back. A little shape up into it with cutting the corners, and pulling them around to give a little roundness. Also Gary Fong makes some flash diffusing globes which give a diffuse lighting effect. Any of these minimize shadows, but still have the one light source.
 
Hi Dr. Bob,

I wrote an article for Rangefinder magazine in 1982 about the advantages of using a softbox. :mrgreen: That's at a time when most shooters were still using parabolic reflectors. Lighting is THE key element of creating a good image... the literal translation of photography is: painting with light. A softbox gives good highlights and soft shadows compared to a harder light source. The variations of it are bouncing light off a large source, shooting light through a diffuser, and umbrellas. To get the best light on a particular image, shooters will use... (big surprise here) the best tool for the job. It may be a gold, silver or white reflector, bounce fill, a hard edge light with barndoors, etc.

A week long seminar wouldn't give me time to show the best way to use all the lighting tools... but many photographers pick one type of light as "their signature" style (or because of costs) and make it work for a wide variety of situations.

I've never been a fan of flash on camera, even with the different types of diffusers - it tends to flatten shapes. It IS fast and easy. In that case, a ring light would be just as effective and easier to hand-hold.

Even though we were early adopters of digital technology, I tend to be "old school" when it comes to lighting. I'll take dramatic over bland. Give me something that DEMANDS that I look at the image and stay in it, and it will sell images and products.

Whew... I thought that stuff was gone. :wink:

Best wishes,
Jim
 
Most of what I shoot requires on camera--or near camera flash (I do have a transmitter and my 7D has a transmitter, so I can more easily take flashes off camera--but again convience. I agree about on camera--but that is the reason I try and bounce and difuse when I can--which is 95 % of the time--the challange is out of doors, with nothing to bounce off of, and that I why I made my own on flash reflectors. I also carry several pop out reflectors--in white. gold and silver for fills from the single source.

Thanks for the thoughts.

Bob
 
hardee":3g7fwbs7 said:
"Whew... I thought that stuff was gone. "
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Jim, Not a chance, and you still do it very well. (Both answer and shoot.)

BTW, I might still have that article.

Harvey
SleepyC :moon
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The article was called "One Light Magic", Harvey. I came across some tear sheets of it when we emptied out a storage unit last year. I remember it because it was my first national magazine article. They paid me 90 whole dollars for it. 8) It got me revved up because they asked for more articles and it lead to doing seminars... where I got paid to talk about what I did for a living, as opposed to actually doing it. :mrgreen: The manufacturer of that light (it was called a DeeLight at the time) gave me free equipment. I really thought I had arrived. :roll:

Thanks for the kind words, Harvey. If you have a copy of the article, you and my Mother may be the only ones.

Best wishes,
Jim
 
Brent, my guess is that there was a soft box involved to diffuse the light. If not that, then like Jim or Bob said, lots of bounce/reflectors from off camera lights.

Group question... Did Bill create the photo forum? I haven't looked since getting back from Death Valley.
 
Thanks
This is for a work project using what we have on hand which is little except a copy stand. I wanted equipment and work related pics and everything around it which is a lot of stuff removed. For lighting, I just have the copy lights and an older Sony digital camera. I will look around for a tutorial
 
JamesTXSD":al5sow88 said:
Warren's suggestion is the fast easy way. If you want to make it not look cut out, small product photography is pretty simple:

A seamless background, could be paper.

One light source, generally off to a 45º angle from the product.

A reflector to bounce some light into the shadow area.

It starts getting more complicated when you have glass or shiny objects in there... but if you're looking to sell on eBay or CL, that really isn't much of an issue.

That's the basics. You can add additional lights to highlight edges, backlight, or open shadows, but it should still look like there's one light source. The tell-tale sign of an amateur product shot is more than one shadow. It's unnatural to your mind/eye.

Small product photo is like sailing... you can learn to do it in an afternoon and spend the rest of your life perfecting it.

Best wishes,
Jim B.
Click to expand...

Thanks again but the main problem is not having the correct illumination tools
 
great
thanks again Warren

What is an easy to select the object of interest and save it as a jpeg? I dont have PhotoShop and cant download GIMP b/c it is a blocked site at work. As a hack I am using text boxes in Power Point around images to hid any private info
 
Brent":2eeqoshd said:
What is an easy to select the object of interest and save it as a jpeg? I dont have PhotoShop and cant download GIMP b/c it is a blocked site at work. As a hack I am using text boxes in Power Point around images to hid any private info
Click to expand...

You are approaching the limits of my knowledge -- maybe Jim will have advice. Do you have to have a transparent background or a plain contrasting background? If the latter, you can change your background to suit. If the former, I only know how to do it in Photoshop. I am not clear, though, on what you mean by hiding info -- details of the product?

Warren
 
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