"Favorable Lighting" used in Knife Pic Ads

coolhand68

coolhand68

Joined
Mar 12, 2006
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1,347
Has anyone else come across this issue? I've purchased a couple of knives in recent months that look considerably different in hand than they did in the photos when advertised. Favorable angles and creative lighting making handle materials seem richer or darker than they truly are, or that don't show any of the minor imperfections. I've been noticing this trend mostly on traditional knives using bone or wood scales.
 
It's not just just lighting... it's photo editing. To be fair... most nice cameras shoot in "RAW" and require saturation and lighting bumps to look "normal" or "nice"... but there are plenty of photos out there that really look over processed to me. Nice pics, nice lighting, and modest edits are one thing... changing the overall look/feel of a knife is another. Pretty much every major knife site does this as well (edits - bump contrast/saturation/vibrancy, play with shadow/highlights/texture, studio lights etc). Once you get into photography a little bit, you can fairly easily see when/how people edit... again, I don't think it's always wrong - like real estate photography - it gets people looking - but must be done modestly enough that it's not false advertising.
 
Just to add, I have also experienced the inverse... a knife or two that I almost didn't buy based off of poorly lit, poorly framed pics... only to get them in hand and see that they were nicer then I first thought.
 
Digital images are not great for capturing detail inside detail unless you have a real nice camera.

Also your settings on the device that you view the pictures can affect the image.

If you post some vs. images of the sale ad compared to in hand maybe folks can give a better commentary.
 
It's pretty much the same as the burgers or pizzas shown on TV commercials. They make it so everything is shown in the best light, and is prepared in such a way as to look perfect. Whereas, oftentimes when you get the actual product in hand, it isn't nearly as "plump", large, or nice-looking.

So it is with many of the knife ad photos. In some cases, the knife is made to look like state-of-the-art, high-security facility quality, when in fact the actual product often falls (far) short of the image presented. That's advertising.

Jim
 
I take all my pics with a Samsung 6, and I think I get some decent results so it's not the camera.

There's tons of tricks from back when I used film. Such as If you take a pic on overcast days you get more deeper looking pics. Using white boxes etc or even a sheet of white paper to deflect light. Fill flash on a sunny day.

Really though there's so many editing software that's easy to use. I use pixlr X. My problem is I make too many versions of one pic then have a hard time deciding which one is best.
 
coolhand68 said:
Has anyone else come across this issue? I've purchased a couple of knives in recent months that look considerably different in hand than they did in the photos when advertised. Favorable angles and creative lighting making handle materials seem richer or darker than they truly are, or that don't show any of the minor imperfections. I've been noticing this trend mostly on traditional knives using bone or wood scales.
Click to expand...

Photo:

20191214-110019.jpg


Edited Photo:

IMG-20191214-120248-113.jpg


That's not even a particularly invasive edit. Dialed up the saturation a bit, shadows, highlights, contrast... pretty standard fare.

With considerable effort you could get there with lighting, but editing software makes it easier.
 
justjed said:
Not really sure where you're going with this. I mean, that is precisely WHY ad agencies and manufacturers HIRE photographers!
Click to expand...

Where I’m going? It’s pretty straight forward, no ambiguity in my thread unless you are just being deliberately obtuse.
 
some japanese photographers have
had a great influence on knife photography.
check out naganori tsutsumi's work in
"focus on blade" (1993).
img.axd

also ichiro nagata in the legendary
magazine "sentou knife/combat knife " (2001)
s-l400.jpg

there have been vast improvements
in photography since.
but inmo, nothing beats seeing great works
of "art" for the first time.
 
I guess I don"t understand why it's an issue. I wouldn't hire a photographer to make my product not look good in a picture...
 
Because crappy photos don’t sell knives.

They cannot create something that isn’t there, unless they’re unscrupulous photoshopers which I’ve never seen.

Nothing wrong with pumping up the contrast, saturation and black levels.

This ROK was shot Raw with a pro camera and edited with pro software.

It looks exactly as it does in person.

p3686425086-5.jpg
 
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When purchasing knives second-hand, don't just look at pictures of them. Read the description too. Pictures are mostly useful for verifying/confirming the issues that the seller describes, such as scratches, dings, and blade being off centered.
 
Marketing/advertising 101.

Unless you can see the knife in person you only have the photos to go by and it's obviously gonna look it's best in photos.

Recently, I had this issue when looking at an OD green Microtech Socom Elite. I really liked the darker green from one dealer, but the identical listing at a different dealer showed a lighter green. All about lighting and editing. It's more of a hunter/ranger green than OD. Maybe Microtech changed the color slightly, but regardless I bought the one I liked based off the photo.

The other dealer could of had the same exact knife, but it looked lighter probably due to better lighting and professional photography. The problem with pro photos is that day to day you and me will rarely be in a proper lit ready for a photo environment. Hence why our knives look off when compared to advertisement photos.

Nature of the beast and it's the disadvantage of buying online.
 
I don't know, there is deceptive editing out there but there are also some knives are tricky to photograph and look wildly different depending on the angles between the lighting source, the knife, and the viewer.

This knife for example is really hard to photograph, the handle is titanium polished to an almost-mirror shine, and the damascus pattern looks very high contrast from some angles and much less so from others. If you were selling it, would you shoot it from the lighting angle that gives the damascus high contrast or low?

TuGEezF.jpg


Sometimes the materials provide their own challenges as well. Would you shoot a mother of pearl handled knife at just the right angle to show the colors, or from the angle that makes it just like a mottled yellowish white? This knife has some screwball "white" CF that looks really different depending on your angle and lighting, for example:

iOpfgOy.jpg
 
Interesting discussion!

Many years ago I had a commercial photography business towards the beginning of digital. A custom knife maker hired me to shoot images of six knives that were going to be printed in a book with his bio and in some magazine. I shot the knives using a 4' x 4' overhead light source to be able to eliminate hot spots, maximize saturation and render them as life like as possible. The trade off was a slight loss in apparent texture. I used a 4x5 camera with 120 back with slide film so it could be scanned. The images were scanned to digital, post processed in Photoshop and then taken back to film.

Proper lighting is the magic regardless!

It takes some serious skill to make that knife or widget look as appealing as possible! Product photography is a highly specialized art form.
 
I have also noticed a trend to angle a folding knife to make the handle to blade ratio look more favorable.
 
As a hobby maker I found it quite a shock to try taking photos of knives I made. First it is very difficult for a non-expert to take good photos, which is why people call SharpbyCoop.
Also, I was surprised at how many small flaws jump out at you in a well lit closeup. It forced me to take my fit and finish to a higher level. Even so it is natural to take many shots and pick the best. This is probably why some people also use video.
 
This is an easy one. Good lighting and favorable angles =OK Cropping, ok.
ANYTHING else falls on a spectrum from slightly deceptive (jacking up saturation, color balance, despeckle, sharpness) to outright lies- I fell victim to an Ebay seller that manipulated colors and transparencies to make his anodizing look totally different.
Quick to return my money, but I still think he's a crook. And he sells A LOT of the knives we like.
 
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