My Photo setup

[mahking51]

Hi Ed,
Fill:
Imagine a sphere lit solely from the right hand side, theleft side will be in darkness as viewed from the front.

Now hold a piece of white paper at 45 deg to reflect (fill) some light into the dark area.
If the material is polystyrene sheet the light will be soft and diffuse; if it was steel polished sheet it would be hard and direct like a mirror.

Negative fill is used to subtract some of the reflected light that is causing a highlight atrea that is unwanted.
Hope this helps!
martin

 

[Paul Chapman]

Another thing you could use, Ed, to soften the shadows is a couple of pieces of white-faced hardboard (which you could easily store along the workshop wall when not in use). With your background stuff and a piece of hardboard propped up each side, you will create a sort of three-sided box. Your main light will create the main, directional lighting, which will then bounce off the three surfaces, effectively softening the shadows.

Cheers :wink:

Paul

 

[RobertMP]

With a D80 you are able to set the colour to any light source by altering the 'white balance'
Two maybe three lights at most. A couple of reflectors made from kitchen foil a couple of diffusers from greaseproof paper.
unless you in pretty much in the deep end of photography stay away from RAW.
JPEG does lose some data during compression but not enough to notice in this situation.
Some pros use RAW many pros stay with JPEG. RAW uses 5 times more memory than JPEG and it only comes in on its own in photoshop.
Essentials are sturdy tripod flat lighting, you need shadow to show depth,
a small aperture for as much depth of field, shutter speed not relevant (its on a tripod)download into something like Picasa III with the few management tools it has you can produce a very good picture.
Have a look at www.kenrockwell.com
You will learn a lot.


John. B

I couldn't disagree more about the use of RAW

The software that comes with the camera will make handling RAW files easy. They may be twice as large as best jpeg but have so much more useful information in them. You can change the white balance easily after the picture has been taken and recover detail from blown highlights and solid shadows that is lost in a jpeg. You do not need photoshop. I only edit in a RAW conversion program then export to jpeg.

Ken Rockwell openly admits somewhere on his site that a lot of his advice is spurious and designed to wind people up. I don't shoot Nikon so I don't look at his site. Those that do agree his advice should be taken with a pinch of salt. he does get discussed at times on talkphotography.

 

[bugbear]

I've recently bought a large piece of green cotton. Unfortunately I couldn't get 3m wide in one go (well, not without paying a fortune) so there is a seam down the middle but the colour means that I can easily remove it in software. It's the same greenscreen technique they use in film and for the weather forecasts etc. I can then replace it with a blank or graded background instead. I've photographed just one piece that way so far, but I'm pleased with the results. I think Nick is going to feature it in the next issue or two.

How to you get the green out at the transitions (i.e. partially coloured image pixels) ?

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

To get the colours right you are going to struggle a little as you are using daylight, fluorescent light, then if you use flash aswell, unless you have it gelled with a fuorescent gel you will get a nasty green colour cast.

As long as you're not using flash, it's easy (even on my compact) to simply set up a custom white balance from a gray (or white) card.

If your camera has RAW mode (or you don't mind post processing JPEG), you can also include a known gray/white target in shot (or in a dediciatd calibration shot) and post-correct the white balance.

The importance of RAW mode can be over stated - if you're taking photos for a web site, any modern camera has so many pixels (spatial resolution) that the final sub-sampling stage (from capture res to web res) will compensate (A LOT) for any quantisation during the processing, either spatial or colour depth.

BugBear

 

[bugbear]

Essentials are sturdy tripod

I'm a great fan of sturdy tripods (I own Manfrotto, Gitzo and a Benbo mk 1).

But for indoor use (which is what we're discussing), something a wobbly as a sapling in a breeze will work, since you can simply use the self timer 10 second delay on the camera to allow any wobble to settle down!

BugBear

 

[Racers]

Hi, Ed

I have a D80 as well nice camera, I wouldn't use it on P, A is best set your aperture nice and small and check the depth of field with the preview button.


Pete

 

[Steve Maskery]

How to you get the green out at the transitions (i.e. partially coloured image pixels) ?

BugBear

Green is good for people because there is no green in flesh tones, whereas there is blue (think varicose veins ) So unless I am wearing a green shirt, there is good tone contrast between me and the background. I use PaintShop Pro as my image editor and it has a Magic Wand selector. I just pick the tool, set the required tolerance (trial & error) and the software just finds it.

There is sometimes an issue of green reflections on the surface of pale woods like maple. I recently photographed a mirror which was standing on the green screen. Although the background was successfully removed, the lower rail, which is angled downwards slightly, had a green cast. Fortunately there are some colour correction tools, and one of them (I forget which - I'd have to do it all again. Mental note to self, record what you learn.) has a preset which does the job perfectly with the click of a mouse.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Benchwayze]

Ummmm... Have I logged into the wrong forum? :-k

... So, point and click isn't good enough then?


Look out wallet!

 

[Mr Ed]

Ummmm... Have I logged into the wrong forum?

There certainly appears to be an untapped seam of photo knowledge on this forum!

Cheers, Ed

 

[Benchwayze]

I don't know the second thing about it! :^o

8)

 

[Ironballs]

Never done much indoor photography, though I should as I have one lens with an excellent macro feature. Most of mine is outdoor/landscape type stuff but difficult to balance work, woodworking, biking, photography and seeing my girlfriend occasionally!

It's fun to play around with the different aperture settings on still life type subjects too, especially if you have some interesting grain or design features. Go on Ed, be experimental

 

[John. B]

Not really surprising when you see some of the high quality pics on these forums.

John. B