# Light boxes and other thoughts...



## kiddo (Mar 7, 2007)

Hi folks;

The past few days I've lost a bit of hair trying to take the "Perfect Pen Pictureâ„¢" and, for what it's worth, share a bit of what I've learned.

First, having great equipment doesn't make one a great photographer...
Going from a camera with fairly few adjustments to one where everything is adjustable requires one to learn and understand a whole new methodology. It's not enough to just read the instruction book and learn what knob or button does what, you need to understand WHY you would want to twiddle that knob or push that button. And twiddling one knob often requires twiddling another knob to keep things in harmony.

Trying to find something relevant on-line lead me to some articles about jewelery photography and how to bring out the "sparkle".
My advice? Ignore these. Pens do not sparkle, they reflect.

It seems one of the goals of pen photography is to get the pic to show how wonderful the finish is. That nice shinny reflection along the length and curve of the pen that you see in real-life is EXACTLY THE THING A LIGHT BOX IS MADE TO PREVENT!!!!

While you can fiddle with the lighting to get a somewhat proper reflection, you are fighting what the light box was designed to prevent and the results are mostly unsatisfactory.

If you think your pictures stink and are missing that WOW factor, don't feel bad. I had the opportunity to work with an advanced photography student this past few days and when she ran into problems, her professor got involved.

The verdict? Pens are very difficult to photograph well.

First, you have a relatively dark piece of wood with fine subtle detail flanked by some very shiny and reflective metal parts. And no matter how good your finish is, the reflectivity of the wooden parts is almost an order of magnitude below that of the metal bits.

So what works?

Well, if your goal is to create photos that showcase your wood and craftsmanship, it's time to learn a few new skills.

First, the setup. Put the light box in the closet and save it for shooting things where you really do want to eliminate reflections.

Use a piece of clear Plexiglas mounted about two or three inches above a white sheet of paper. This moves the shadow way below the pen and it can easily be cropped out later. You have enough problems without having to deal with the shadow as well.

Use three lights to illuminate the pen from the sides and the top. (will include a pic later)

Use a sturdy tripod to shoot at a steep angle down on the pen.

Look through the view finder and make slight adjustments to both the lights and the position of the pen until you see the finish on the pen pop out and the metal bits aren't washed out in glare. It's a juggling act to be sure.

Don't worry at this point if the wood itself seems darker than you would like. It's easier to fix this than to compensate for over exposed metal bits that are nothing but glare.

Shoot the pen. Tweak the lights and/or pen and shoot again. Do this several times so you have a number of shots to choose from when you get to editing them. 

Editing:

One of the mistakes I've been making is using the same tools I use (splines and biesers sp?) to mask and cut out complex shapes for my commercial work. Even the fanciest pen is not a complicated shape!

If you used the setup I described above, your pen will be surrounded with a very even and smooth slightly off-white background that is easily removed with the handy Magic Wand tool. I guess it's worth mentioning that the background becomes this color because you should be metering on the pen and not the background. The whitest parts of the pic should be the reflection highlights on the metal bits and the finish reflections.

Now select your transparent background and invert the selection to select the pen. Here I have found that a good CA finish can act as a light-pipe and cause the edges of the pen to be a bit hazy and bright around the edges. Remove this by shrinking your selection a few pixels. If your resolution is very high, shrinking the selection by 4 or 5 pixels removes most of the light bleeding out around the edge without loosing any of the pen.

"OK, but the wood still looks dark and when I adjust things, the metal bits wash out! Now what?"

Simple... Adjust the wood parts by themselves!

Use your editing tools (Quick Mask in Photoshop) to select just the wood parts of the pen. Since you have removed the background, you can just 'paint' the selection mask over the wood parts being careful only where the wood and metal parts meet. Very simple on a pen.

Now, with the pen next to you, adjust your curves and saturation to make the wood look like it really does without affecting and washing out the metal bits! To keep things looking 'real' desaturate things a bit after the color and detail looks proper.

After you delete the selection mask, use a very diffuse and small blur tool to smooth over the edges if they look a tad rough and the Dodge and Burn tools (again, very diffuse) to smooth and blend the reflections where they cross from the wood to the metal.

I don't want to go into all the details about adjusting a camera and using Photoshop here. But these are skills worth learning.

Why?

How to make and finish a pen is endlessly debated here. You've spent considerable money on tools and wood, and countless hours perfecting your turning and finishing skills, why not take a bit of time to display all that effort with some shots that show off the results of all that work? 

I'm NOT a pro photographer by any means. These comments are what I learned from some real pros combined with a few days and thousands of shots of experimenting. I have yet to produce that 'perfect' shot. But I'm working on it.

Kiddo


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## ashaw (Mar 7, 2007)

Kiddo

Thanks for the great information.  This is the one area I know I keep struggling at.


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## skiprat (Mar 7, 2007)

Wow Kiddo, tons of info there. All of it went straight over my head.
I've seen loads of your pics and it sure doesn't look like you have any problems to me[}]

I just wish I could see a live picture on my PC and just keep fiddling with the camera till the picture on screen looks good, then take the shot. I would be the first in the queue if a decent camera for dummies was ever sold. There is nothing wrong with mine ( a Kodak DX 6490 ) I just can't get my head around it. I can't work the video machine either[]


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## kiddo (Mar 7, 2007)

> _Originally posted by skiprat_
> <br />Wow Kiddo, tons of info there. All of it went straight over my head.
> I've seen loads of your pics and it sure doesn't look like you have any problems to me[}]
> 
> I just wish I could see a live picture on my PC and just keep fiddling with the camera till the picture on screen looks good, then take the shot. I would be the first in the queue if a decent camera for dummies was ever sold. There is nothing wrong with mine ( a Kodak DX 6490 ) I just can't get my head around it. I can't work the video machine either[]



There IS something at least a little close to what you describe...

If your camera supports RAW format, you can use tools to change a number of the cameras parameters AFTER you take the picture. (focus is unfortunately not one of them).

You can do some pretty cool stuff with RAW format. Check your cameras book to see if you have it. There are a number of tools available on-line and maybe your camera came with a CD with the necessary software.

The camera I have has a 'video-out' connector, but I don't think it shows anything until after you snap the pic. I could be wrong but I'll try it soon and let you know if it shows the image on the screen. I'd love something like that too!


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## ctwxlvr (Mar 7, 2007)

another trick to reduce the reflectiveness of the metal parts is a quick spritz of hair spray on just the major offending part.


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## dbriski (Mar 8, 2007)

The Point and Shoot cameras with the active screen out put real time images to their video out too I believe.  (No actually info to back that but but I think my old one did that Sony DCS-P9)  No way you will get that functionality in a DSLR.


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## alxe24 (Mar 9, 2007)

> If your camera supports RAW format, you can use tools to change a number of the cameras parameters AFTER you take the picture. (focus is unfortunately not one of them).


.
Shoot the pic with different appetures on the lanse and see what works best based on your lense. Your camera has a depht of field preview. That is a pretty handy feature when shutting macro or close to it.  Also you provably use it already but unsharp mask on PS is very good to make thing look sharper and neater.
Thanks for sharing
Alex


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## Chuck Key (Mar 9, 2007)

> _Originally posted by skiprat_
> <br />
> I just wish I could see a live picture on my PC and just keep fiddling with the camera till the picture on screen looks good, then take the shot.



My older Olympus camera can do that.  I believe the software only works with cameras with a certain chip set.  Here is a screen shot of the software in use:




<br />

Now, if it would just improve the subject matter all would be good [:I]

Chuckie


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## Roy99664 (Mar 9, 2007)

Could you possibly post a "before photoshop" and an "after photoshop" picture so we could what you are talking about in the editing process.

Thanks


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## Tea Clipper (Mar 9, 2007)

My Canon A520 came with software similar to above.  Unfortunately, I didn't find it very useful.    []


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## kiddo (Mar 10, 2007)

> _Originally posted by Roy99664_
> <br />Could you possibly post a "before photoshop" and an "after photoshop" picture so we could what you are talking about in the editing process.
> 
> Thanks



Sure Roy. Will be doing some work later today and will make some before/after pics.


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## bob393 (Mar 11, 2007)

Kim: Thanks for sharing, you are getting closer to the perfect picture!


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## kiddo (Mar 14, 2007)

> _Originally posted by skiprat_
> <br />
> I just wish I could see a live picture on my PC and just keep fiddling with the camera till the picture on screen looks good, then take the shot. I would be the first in the queue if a decent camera for dummies was ever sold.



Queue up Skiprat!

Computer controlled digital photography:







Camera under computer control, hands off operation.


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## JimGo (Mar 14, 2007)

That's a sweet little set up Kiddo![]


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## skiprat (Mar 14, 2007)

Well done Kiddo, I knew YOU could do it. Now spill the beans matey!!!
How did you do it? [] 

Oh, one thing though....I realize that you aren't technically inclined, like the rest of us photo gurus but you can get more use from your pc if you turn it around[}]

Again, well done. Can't wait to see how you did it and if I can make it work on my camera


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## kiddo (Mar 17, 2007)

> _Originally posted by skiprat_
> <br />
> Oh, one thing though....I realize that you aren't technically inclined, like the rest of us photo gurus but you can get more use from your pc if you turn it around[}]
> 
> Again, well done. Can't wait to see how you did it and if I can make it work on my camera



I think you said you have the 350D model. Just load the CDs that came with it and plug it in. 

By the way... is that a blond joke?  
[:I]

Actually, there are no controls on the front. Everything I seem to use most is on the back of the pc. Even the CD-ROM is mounted elsewhere.


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## mdburn_em (Mar 17, 2007)

That's a very nice little setup.  Noisy, I bet.  It appears you have 2 fan ends of cpu's pointed toward you.


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