Alrighty, newbie pics, take 2

[GarageBoy]

Natural Lighting (4:30PM, cloudy skies)

Manual White Balance on a GE Reveal lightbulb in a table lamp

Same as above, 1 EV under
All below are the same table lamp.

The background is artists' vellum

 

[GarageBoy]

Better than the first?

 

[yuzuha]

Suggestion. Go to a camera store and get a Kodak gray card and set your exposure with it (maybe try using it as a background or preset your exposure with it as the light meters in cameras are calibrated to adjust exposure to produce that value)

http://www.kodak.com/US/en/motion/products/tools/cinematographer.shtml

http://www.cameraguild.com/technology/gray_card.htm

If you let the camera / meter do most of the work, you'll have less to do in Photoshop

 

[misque]

Focus is good on these pics but they are too dark to make out any detail on the subjects.

Your on the right track, GB.

 

[GarageBoy]

Thanks!..........

 

[PhilL]

GB, you want a broad light source behind and shining down on the subject. Add a reflector (a white card will do) to bounce light back into the shadow of the subject. Your overall exposure is way too dark, which means you're probably taking the exposure of the highlight on the blade. A properly exposed picture will have some detail in the highlight and the shadow.

My suggestion is to read "No Frills Lighting" again.

 

[GarageBoy]

Ok, so I should spot meter the shadow part? I'm having trouble trying to get the camera to focus lock on the knife. Since my light souce is coming from the right, I'll need a reflector on the left? Thanks

 

[yuzuha]

Ok, so I should spot meter the shadow part? I'm having trouble trying to get the camera to focus lock on the knife. Since my light souce is coming from the right, I'll need a reflector on the left? Thanks

you can try it and see what happens. whatever the camera looks at, it is going to set the exposure to make the picture the same tone as a gray card. They came up with this because the average outdoor scene (if you average all the light and dark points) come out a uniform gray. If you are not taking picures of an average outdoor scene, your light meter will lie to you. That is why you will get under-exposed images of people standing in front of a white wall (or if there is a window behind them) or badly overexposed pictures of people standing in front of a black wall. Most film and digital cameras have enough exposure lattitude to handle both the light and dark areas if the camera exposure is set to average exposure (that which you will get if you set the exposure with a gray card).

http://www.apogeephoto.com/mag2-6/mag2-9st_1.shtml

Here is something on the effects of lighting
http://www.azuswebworks.com/photography/ph_light.html
You can combine effects by using reflectors and diffusors (you can diffuse flash too, just put a piece of kleenex over the flash and it will be a bit dimmer and less harsh). Putting a white card to the left and maybe another behind and pointing down a little will help even out those shadows. Here is something someone came up with for gettting good diffused lighting for small objects http://www.deadzoom.com/member/nktower/tutorials/Photographing_Small_Objects.html


More than you'll ever want to know about exposure http://johnlind.tripod.com/science/scienceexposure.html

 

[GarageBoy]

Thanks, I knew about the 18% grey thing, but I thought by underexposing a few stops, I could compensate. (Shoulda overexposed it a few stops)