Help with specific picture
SS
piece of white paper.
When I transfer to my PC the white paper is bluish and the glare on the
(metal) scissors usually ruins the shot.
Or if I dont get the glare I tend to lose the detail/
I don`t have any pro equipement and as its only a few shots so it wouldn`t
be worth buying. (using Nikon SLR)
Any thoughts on how best to take these shots.
Pat
Build yourself a light box.
In its simplest form, it's a diffused light with a controlled
background.
Put a white sheet of cloth or paper on a table. Take a BIG cardboard
box and spray paint it white. Cut a whole in it for your camera
lens. Cut two more holes -- one to left and one to right -- in the
box. Cover the light holes with something light that will diffuse the
light -- maybe wax paper. Shine a light in from each side. Take your
picture with out the scissors there. Use your camera's white balance
feature to balance the photo. Stick in the scissors and shoot away.
If you don't have white spray paint and/or are too cheap to buy
some :-) you can tape some white copy paper to all of the inside
edges. You can steal the paper from work.
J�rgen Exner
>I am trying to take a picture of a pair of scissors. I have scissors on a
>piece of white paper.
>When I transfer to my PC the white paper is bluish
Adjust your white balance
>and the glare on the
>(metal) scissors usually ruins the shot.
Use a polarizing filter
jue
Nicko
Won't work with reflections off of metal.
--
YOP...
tony cooper
I've photographed quite a bit of sterling silver flatware in a
home-made light box. I purchased a $10 lampshade from Target and cut
the wire frame out at the top. The lampshade is one solid piece of
some translucent plastic that looks like parchment, so there's no
shadow from the ribs. The shade diffuses the light from my external
lamps, and the light is evenly diffused.
The blue color the OP is referring to is a white balance problem.
White paper will photograph bluish on auto white balance, but should
whiten up if the camera white balance is set to incandescent if
incandescent external lights are used. The OP has to be careful that
no other light reaches the subject. If there's a fluorescent light in
the room, or sunlight streaming in, the paper will be bluish even with
the white balance set.
The OP could use construction paper as a background and pick a color
that is not as subject to tint as white. Sky blue, for example.
--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida
Charles
"SS" <none...@blueyonder.co.uk> wrote in message
news:2_gol.5759$Hk2....@newsfe22.ams2...
As others have said, use diffused light. This can be easier than
building/using a light box. Shoot outside on an overcast day, for example.
White balance can be set to custom on some SLRs, allowing one to get almost
perfect color balance. Check your Nikon manual.
SS
"Charles" <charles...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:gnsjee$ss3$1...@news.motzarella.org...
picture.
Appreciate your help.
BF
Dave W
> Thanks for all the replies, I should get something to work now for a better
> picture.
>
>
> - Show quoted text -
I think it's the white paper that's the trouble. The camera tries to
reproduce this as it's the main thing, and the scissors' grey scale
gets compressed and lost. I should change the background to grey. Also
put paper in front of the light to diffuse it, to avoid bright
reflections from the scissors that get reproduced at the expense of
the shadows.
Dave W
C J Campbell
Make sure that you have the color on your PC monitor set up properly.
If the paper in your camera LCD is white, but blue on the PC monitor,
then it probably is your PC, not the camera.
Put the Nikon on a small tripod and aim it at the scissors. Put it on
self timer. Set up the pop-up flash as a commander unit. Hold a piece
of white paper above the scissors and hold a Nikon flash set up as a
slave somewhat behind it so that the whole paper will be illuminated
when it goes off. Trip the shutter, grab the flash and the paper you
are using as a diffuser, hold them above the scissors, and wait for the
timer to pop. I use a small sheet of white plastic instead of a sheet
of paper for the diffuser, but I am a pro. :-)
The point is, you can use almost anything white for your diffuser as
long as it lets enough light through to illuminate your subject.
Sheets, napkins, handkerchiefs, etc, all will work -- they just have to
be flat (handkerchiefs tend to be a little limp, come to think of it)
and the flash has to be held away from it so that you get a big diffuse
light source instead of a small point light source.
Alternatively you can use a sheet of white cardboard held above the
scissors and hold the flash underneath it, pointing it at the cardboard
so that it reflects off of it and onto the subject. The only difference
pro equipment makes is that it helps keep you from wasting light and
getting it into areas where you don't want it, really, and you have
less trouble with shadows from whatever you are holding your lights
with.
Use the white balance setting on your camera to adjust until the paper
appears white on the LCD.
--
Waddling Eagle
World Famous Flight Instructor
tony cooper
<christophercam...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>On 2009-02-22 10:39:52 -0800, "SS" <none...@blueyonder.co.uk> said:
>
>> I am trying to take a picture of a pair of scissors. I have scissors on a
>> piece of white paper.
>> When I transfer to my PC the white paper is bluish and the glare on the
>> (metal) scissors usually ruins the shot.
>> Or if I dont get the glare I tend to lose the detail/
>> I don`t have any pro equipement and as its only a few shots so it wouldn`t
>> be worth buying. (using Nikon SLR)
>>
>> Any thoughts on how best to take these shots.
>
>Make sure that you have the color on your PC monitor set up properly.
>If the paper in your camera LCD is white, but blue on the PC monitor,
>then it probably is your PC, not the camera.
Possible, but not likely. I've done a lot of similar photography.
I've photographed coins, Indian relics, antique pocket watches, and
sterling silver flatware using a camera mounted on a copy stand and
external illumination. I've done quite a bit of experimenting in the
use of various background material and colors.
White paper, cardboard, mounting board, matte, foam board, etc,
photographs with a bluish cast. It is *the* most difficult background
color to adjust even using a gray card and Curves in Photoshop. Bring
the shot to a good white, and you blow out parts of the object you're
photographing in most cases. Even adjusting to a gray card and using
Curves, a white background is often unevenly illuminated
You can work with a white background in a soft box with a lot of
external diffused light, but it doesn't seem to me that the OP is
willing to fabricate the right kind of set-up for this.
I still maintain that the OP, if he has to have a white background,
will find the easiest solution to be using a sharply contrasting
background color, doing a knock-out, and bringing a white-filled layer
behind the knock-out.