How to Take a Great Photo of Your Knives?
- Thread starter Timstools
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- Nov 6, 2005
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Larry, same thing with the light box, cannot seem to find the time to build one, just lucky enough on Sunday afternoon, which was bright, and the mild weather to get outside and try some available light photography.
Timstools, you mentioned the hosting size of images, I think you can get some really big images if you, host them at large sizes, then paste them in, I will try one later and see what happens.
One other image hosting sight is image shack, they allow you to host pics, up to 1.5 Meg, handy when you do not want to loose quality, when re-sizing images.
Rusty1
Timstools, you mentioned the hosting size of images, I think you can get some really big images if you, host them at large sizes, then paste them in, I will try one later and see what happens.
One other image hosting sight is image shack, they allow you to host pics, up to 1.5 Meg, handy when you do not want to loose quality, when re-sizing images.
Rusty1
I believe I orginally scanned those for a "show your corkscrews" topic in the traditional forum a few weeks ago. They are part of my Bruckmann collection, actually they are most of my Bruckmann collection since most Bruckmanns have a corkscrew.
Here's another scan from a long-ago topic showing the detail possible by zooming on a scanner. It would be much more difficult with a camera.
-Bob
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timstools, not to change the subject but im very green to the scrims,but my family is very into indy car racing and has an actual pit crew member on the andretti green team, anyway other than e-bay can anyone give me any info on thoes indy car scrims and or where I can get a few? I found one with the older style of indy cars on e-bay that im bidding on now but any help would be great. like what I should expet to pay or what my chance of find some are? thanks guys.-joel
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It's all about lighting. The more light the better but you want diffused light, either through a white cloth or bounced off of a white reflector or photography umbrella. This will give you a softer, more even lighting without hot spots. To eliminate harsh shadows you really need lighting from multiple opposing angles. Most pros use 3-point lighting. The main light is from above and behind the camera and a little to one side. Fill light is from the opposing side and not as strong as the main light. A third light from above and behind the object will highlight edges and create contrast separating the object from the background.
A flash can be used if it is one that you can pivot the head and bounce the flash off of a reflective surface. A straight-on flash almost never looks good.
Work with the angle of the light and the angle of the object. You want some subtle shading to show the grindlines and countours of the blade. I position a white or metallic silver card so that it reflects in the blade and other reflective parts of the knife. White foam core board from an office supply store works great both as a white card to reflect in the blade and as something to bounce light where you need it.
Also consider that the more light you have, the wider aperature you can use giving you more depth of field, the amount of distance in focus from from to rear.
A light box is great for shooting knives and if you do it much, I would highly recommend that you invest in one or build one. If you do a liitle searching on the knife forums you can find some excellent tips from the pros like Jim Cooper and Buddy Thomason and even some tutorials on building an inexpensive light box.
I hope this helps. A lot depends on the camera and lens too.
A flash can be used if it is one that you can pivot the head and bounce the flash off of a reflective surface. A straight-on flash almost never looks good.
Work with the angle of the light and the angle of the object. You want some subtle shading to show the grindlines and countours of the blade. I position a white or metallic silver card so that it reflects in the blade and other reflective parts of the knife. White foam core board from an office supply store works great both as a white card to reflect in the blade and as something to bounce light where you need it.
Also consider that the more light you have, the wider aperature you can use giving you more depth of field, the amount of distance in focus from from to rear.
A light box is great for shooting knives and if you do it much, I would highly recommend that you invest in one or build one. If you do a liitle searching on the knife forums you can find some excellent tips from the pros like Jim Cooper and Buddy Thomason and even some tutorials on building an inexpensive light box.
I hope this helps. A lot depends on the camera and lens too.
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Thanks for the compliment. The quote is one I heard once when a couple of old fishermen were taking their johnboat out of the lake. One guy was on the bank the the other was in the boat using the outboard motor to nose the boat up to the bank. The nose tipped up and the motor got down it the mud. Thats when the guy yelled "Shut 'er down, Floyd, she's a suckin' up mud!". It just struck me funny.
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Yes,640 is about the largest that fill most screens,plus a large file size will load slowly on a dial-up connection and some viewers don't appreciate having to wait.
Ron
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Those are excellent pictures,MisterSat !!:thumbup:
Are you certain that your comment,about a larger aperture giving you more depth of field, is correct?
Ron
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Mistersat
Yes you are correct, your recmmendation is the proffesional way to to it, they even have small tents you can buy on ebay to do this. I would have purchased one of these but I dont think it would give a better photo that the one below with the sky shade method. This photo was taken by putting the knife close to the end of the shade cover from my house and directly above reflected off the bolsters is the sky. That is why the brass bolsters on the handle are so bright, also etching is great this way. If I had anything at all filtering the light for example like a white cloth in a photogaphy tent then I would see that reflecting off brass even if lighting was sufficient. I would definitley buy one if I thought it would allow me to take a better photo as they are not that expensive.
You mentioned the flash I have tried with flash on an angle and although this gets rid of the flash hot spot on the knives it still makes all the other edges of my knives (LB7s) look harsh and glary.
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Those are excellent pictures,MisterSat !!:thumbup:
Are you certain that your comment,about a larger aperture giving you more depth of field, is correct?
Ron
Good catch, I did not state that well. Some clarification: The smaller the aperture (actual size of the iris opening in the camera) the MORE depth of field you will have. However, on manual cameras the aperture size (known as f-stops) are represented by a series of numbers on the lens aperture ring such as 2.8, 5.6, 11, 22. The larger the aperture number, the smaller the actual aperture size thus more depth of field.
For example, assuming that you had enough light avalable, you could shoot a photo at a shutter speed of 1/15 second at an aperture of f/22 OR you could shoot it at a shutter speed of 1/2000 second at aperture f/2. Both would yeild properly exposed photos but the shot using the aperture of f/22 would have considerably more depth of field than the shot at f/2.
Sorry for the confusion.
On most automatic cameras, they will automatically adjust the aperture according to the amount of light present and will typically adjust to the largest aperture that will provide proper exposure. The more light you have, the more the auto camera will adjust to a smaller aperture and thus provide more depth of field.
Also be aware the when shooting in macro mode, macro typically has a very short depth of field and you may find that part of a knife closer to the lens is in sharp focus but part of the knife just slightly farther away from the lens may be out of focus.
One more thing about photo sizes for the web. Photos 600 or 640 pixels wide are typically used. There is no need to use anything more than 72-96 dpi resolution because most monitors display picture in that range. If you are using .jpeg images you can compress them to 50% without any noticible loss in quality for use on the web. I posted a test page on my web site to test this. I used the same photo at various resolutions and jpeg compressions to see how it affected the visual quality and download times. You can see for yourself here: Web Photo Test
It's all about lighting. The more light the better but you want diffused light, either through a white cloth or bounced off of a white reflector or photography umbrella. This will give you a softer, more even lighting without hot spots. To eliminate harsh shadows you really need lighting from multiple opposing angles. Most pros use 3-point lighting. The main light is from above and behind the camera and a little to one side. Fill light is from the opposing side and not as strong as the main light. A third light from above and behind the object will highlight edges and create contrast separating the object from the background.
A flash can be used if it is one that you can pivot the head and bounce the flash off of a reflective surface. A straight-on flash almost never looks good.
Work with the angle of the light and the angle of the object. You want some subtle shading to show the grindlines and countours of the blade. I position a white or metallic silver card so that it reflects in the blade and other reflective parts of the knife. White foam core board from an office supply store works great both as a white card to reflect in the blade and as something to bounce light where you need it.
Also consider that the more light you have, the wider aperature you can use giving you more depth of field, the amount of distance in focus from from to rear.
A light box is great for shooting knives and if you do it much, I would highly recommend that you invest in one or build one. If you do a liitle searching on the knife forums you can find some excellent tips from the pros like Jim Cooper and Buddy Thomason and even some tutorials on building an inexpensive light box.
I hope this helps. A lot depends on the camera and lens too.
Great post; thanks for all the useful information.
One question - where do you place the white or silver card
you referred to? (I can see its effect now that you've mentioned it...)
Thanks,
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- Jan 15, 2006
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Where you place the card to reflect in the blade depends on the postion of the knife and the position of the camera. I typically shoot a blade at a slight angle to the camera so whatever is reflected in it will be just off to the side of the camera. I can stand a reflector card just out of the shot on the side or sometimes actually hold it over the blade just above camera range. I often use more than one card because I might be dealing with several different reflecting angles.
One thing to note. A mirror polished blade can sometimes look a little flat or even like a satin finsih with a white card reflected in it. Sometimes you want a little more reflection to show that the blade is shiny. Here is a shot where I held a white piece of cloth above the blade and the wrinkles in the cloth help show how polished the blade is.
In contrast, in the shot below I used a white card and even though the blade was mirror polished, it really does not show how shiny it is.
