A couple of my knives. Picture taken with my new light box

Barry Clodfelter

Barry Clodfelter

Knifemaker / Craftsman / Service Provider
Joined
May 29, 2007
Messages
579
Here are a couple knives I recently made. I finally built a light box today and took these pics. They look a lot better than the way I was taking them.

This one is a 1095 hunter with buffalo scales.
wp_DSC_5237.jpg


This one is ATS-34 fighter? with curly maple handle and mokume guard.
wp_DSC_5245.jpg


There are still more buttons on my camera that I don't what they do but I think these pics turned out pretty good.

What do you think?
 
Nice!

I made light "frame" recently, but I am having a little trouble with the lighting -

Yours looks a lot closer than I have been able to get.

Thanks!

best

mqqn
 
Really good, Do you mind telling us more about your light box design? Anyway, nice knives also.
 
madness522 said:
What do you think?
Click to expand...

Very nice knives! :)

I like the bottom photo much better than the top. The top has somewhat harsh lighting . . . it looks as though maybe the flash fired? If your camera has the option, turn the flash off. This usually results in slower shutter speeds which may result in blurry photos. If that's the case, you can either bump up the ISO, or use a tripod to hold the camera steady.

I'm not sure what type of light box set-up you have, but I've learned to play around with the placement of the lights and try different backgrounds (which will affect exposure and white balance) to achieve the desired result.
 
It always seem there is more stuff to learn.those pictures Looks good to me, also great looking knives.

Steve
 
They look good to me! But the bottom one does look better imho. Looks like there is some flash on the point of the first one and the sheath looks darker, but overall, really good! I just bought a new camera and I'm working out all the buttons also. Gonna have to build me another light box also. How about a picture of your set up?
 
Thanks guys! The light box is a copy of Coop's design for the $75 light box. The first pic I think the flash did go off so I turned it off. One thing I am still missing is the diffuser. Coop recommends using a plain white trash bag but we didn't have one so I cut up a tee shirt and used it just because I wanted to start playing photographer.... Next trip into town I will pickup some trash bags and probably some white tissue paper just to see how it works. Still so much to learn about taking good pics not to mention making good knives.
 
madness522 said:
Thanks guys! The light box is a copy of Coop's design for the $75 light box. The first pic I think the flash did go off so I turned it off. One thing I am still missing is the diffuser. Coop recommends using a plain white trash bag but we didn't have one so I cut up a tee shirt and used it just because I wanted to start playing photographer.... Next trip into town I will pickup some trash bags and probably some white tissue paper just to see how it works. Still so much to learn about taking good pics not to mention making good knives.
Click to expand...

You wouldn't have a link to this light box project would you. I would love to see it so I would no more about how to build one! By the way I like the bottom pic better also! :thumbup:
 
madness522 said:
One thing I am still missing is the diffuser. Coop recommends using a plain white trash bag but we didn't have one so I cut up a tee shirt and used it just because I wanted to start playing photographer....
Click to expand...

If you used white cloth then that is a diffuser. The disadvantage is that it won't transmit as much light as the trash bag so it will take longer exposures but it should give a similar look to the photos. You can move your lights around even with a lightbox and get different looks. You can also do some post-processing of the images on your computer. If you don't have software that came with your camera you can download a free program called "gimp" and it will allow you to change lightness, darkness, contrast using the "curves" or "levels" command. The bottom one looks a little bit dark and might benefit from adjusting the levels a little bit.
 
12345678910 said:
http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/showthread.php/328550-No-Frills-75-00-home-studio-tent-lightbox
Click to expand...

Thank count! That is the thread...all 30 some pages of it...read it a couple times and then built one.

bd, I will look into "gimp". I have photoshop but haven't used it much. Those pics are untouched except for shrinking them before up loading to photobucket. I have a lot of tinkering to do yet to get good pics but these can out way better than without a light box and I'm happy with them for now until I get time to tinker with some settings and moving around the lights.
 
I picked up a 2ft x 2ft light tent for somewhere around $40-50 and it is lightyears better than the trashbag-as-diffuser method!!
 
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