- Joined
- Dec 27, 2006
- Messages
- 6,710
Hi All! I thought I'd share some tips for photographing your knives.
I have to admit, it pains me a little to see pics of some beautiful blades made ugly from laziness. There are way too many "Sorry, it's a crappy shot I took on my phone" excuses
So as an example, all the shots you see here are taken with my iphone 4. Whilst SLR photography is awesome, for the average Joe it's way too technical, and well, we all don't have fancy pants SLR cameras. Most of us just want to point and shoot so here are some basic pointers for getting the best shot you can with minimal effort.
There are 2 important things you should think of when taking your shot - lighting and composition. Lighting is probably the most important thing to consider when taking a photo.
So what is good lighting? By this I mean soft light, diffused light. Photos taken outside on an overcast day look great. Why? The shadows are soft. There is no harsh contrast between the light and shadow areas. Phone cameras, well most cameras, cannot expose for both dark and light at the same time, so soft diffuse light always works best. Shooting your knives in shadows on a sunny day will work great.
NO FLASH!!! THE FLASH IS YOUR ENEMY!!!! Knives are shiny things, so anything taken with the flash will have bright ugly light bounce straight back at the camera and ruin the shot.
Edited to add: These tips apply to any camera.
Enough waffling on. Lets have a look at some bad shots...
Taken with the flash. Poor composition and terrible background. As you can see, awesome knives that look ugly.
Here's some diffused lighting, but with awful backgrounds and poor composition. As you can see the details are starting to look a bit better, but the pic is still a bit blech.
OK!!! We're getting there. Here's some with a better composition, but with not so great lighting. Note the nice backgrounds and angle of the knife in the shot - corner to corner.
Rightio! Here they are with much better lighting and composition. They are just taken in shadow out the front of my house on a sunny day. Tip - to get the satin to really 'glow', angle the camera until you find a nice even reflection of the sky/ceiling etc. Be careful not to cast your own shadow on to the knife. These pics are all straight from the phone, no editing has been done.
So, you now know how to take a decent shot of your knife with your phone and minimal effort. Remember - Lighting & Composition. I can't stress these two points enough.
Some of us like to push the shot a little further with a little post editing to get the most out of our image. Here are the same shots as before with a little editing done in photoshop. I pushed the contrast a little, put a soft vignette around the whole image to draw our focus to the knife and adjusted the colour saturation.
So there you go. No more "Crappy phone shot" excuses
Happy shooting my friends!
I have to admit, it pains me a little to see pics of some beautiful blades made ugly from laziness. There are way too many "Sorry, it's a crappy shot I took on my phone" excuses
So as an example, all the shots you see here are taken with my iphone 4. Whilst SLR photography is awesome, for the average Joe it's way too technical, and well, we all don't have fancy pants SLR cameras. Most of us just want to point and shoot so here are some basic pointers for getting the best shot you can with minimal effort.There are 2 important things you should think of when taking your shot - lighting and composition. Lighting is probably the most important thing to consider when taking a photo.
So what is good lighting? By this I mean soft light, diffused light. Photos taken outside on an overcast day look great. Why? The shadows are soft. There is no harsh contrast between the light and shadow areas. Phone cameras, well most cameras, cannot expose for both dark and light at the same time, so soft diffuse light always works best. Shooting your knives in shadows on a sunny day will work great.
NO FLASH!!! THE FLASH IS YOUR ENEMY!!!! Knives are shiny things, so anything taken with the flash will have bright ugly light bounce straight back at the camera and ruin the shot.
Edited to add: These tips apply to any camera.
Enough waffling on. Lets have a look at some bad shots...
Taken with the flash. Poor composition and terrible background. As you can see, awesome knives that look ugly.
Here's some diffused lighting, but with awful backgrounds and poor composition. As you can see the details are starting to look a bit better, but the pic is still a bit blech.
OK!!! We're getting there. Here's some with a better composition, but with not so great lighting. Note the nice backgrounds and angle of the knife in the shot - corner to corner.
Rightio! Here they are with much better lighting and composition. They are just taken in shadow out the front of my house on a sunny day. Tip - to get the satin to really 'glow', angle the camera until you find a nice even reflection of the sky/ceiling etc. Be careful not to cast your own shadow on to the knife. These pics are all straight from the phone, no editing has been done.
So, you now know how to take a decent shot of your knife with your phone and minimal effort. Remember - Lighting & Composition. I can't stress these two points enough.
Some of us like to push the shot a little further with a little post editing to get the most out of our image. Here are the same shots as before with a little editing done in photoshop. I pushed the contrast a little, put a soft vignette around the whole image to draw our focus to the knife and adjusted the colour saturation.
So there you go. No more "Crappy phone shot" excuses
Happy shooting my friends!
Last edited:
Toes in pics! Arghhhhhhhh. 
