# Need help taking a decent photo



## frank123 (Sep 22, 2012)

Need help and or suggestions for taking photos.

This was shot outdoors in shade with a piece of printer paper for a background. It almost took sort of almost OK except for the problem with the clip and the nib not showing up as they should. 

This wasn't my first try, wish it was, but it's about 6 down the line from it. It's the best I can achieve so far without some advice on what to do next.

So where do I go from here to try to get a better picture?  Better camera?  Photo editor?  If so which one?

(FWIW, this was just a simple pen I made from scraps of stuff I had laying around and a clip salvaged from -IIRC- a papermate I took it off of when threw it away. Nothing speical but I thought I might use it for experimenting because it has a fair amount of detail I thought might be good to learn photo taking with to try getting a reasonably decent photo -something I haven't achieved yet).


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## azamiryou (Sep 22, 2012)

http://content.penturners.org/library/techniques/pen_photography.pdf


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## ossaguy (Sep 22, 2012)

I too want to learn how to take better pictures.I hope I'm not hijacking this thread but can someone tell me when when I set a pen on a white sheet of paper,my camera turns the white to pink.Is there a way to adjust this out? 

If I have it set on macro and use the flash,the colors are way off.If I use no flash,the color is pretty close,but the light green background for example looks tan.

I read the above tutorial,but it's kinda over my head in technical lingo & such.I'll have to really study it word-for-word.

I have a Canon Powershot SX120.

Thanks for any advice,

Steve


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## randywa (Sep 22, 2012)

If you can, try one with a gray background. What I've been using is just a scrap piece of gray flannel, but it worked for me.


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## Nick (Sep 22, 2012)

*Photo*

The photo looks fine from here. The only think I would add is some sort of b/g to break up the white area a bit.


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## azamiryou (Sep 22, 2012)

ossaguy said:


> when I set a pen on a white sheet of paper,my camera turns the white to pink.Is there a way to adjust this out?
> 
> If I have it set on macro and use the flash,the colors are way off.If I use no flash,the color is pretty close,but the light green background for example looks tan.
> 
> I read the above tutorial,but it's kinda over my head in technical lingo & such.I'll have to really study it word-for-word.



Muddling through the library article will be well worth the effort. But I'll try to give some simple guidance on the color issue.

This is caused by the "white balance" setting in the camera. Different types of light have different color, and the camera has to be set to match the light source. In most cameras you can set this for a particular light source (incandescent/fluorescent/sunlight/etc), use a custom white balance, or let the camera automatically set the white balance.

Most likely, your camera is doing auto white balance. In this mode, the camera "looks" at the whole scene, and chooses a white balance setting to make the image have about the same amount of every color. So, for example, if you're photographing a blue or green pen on white paper, the correct image contains lots of white and blue or green, but very little red and orange. Since the camera wants to even out the color, it shifts things to bring some red/orange into the white background to balance out the blue/green of the pen.

To fix, you'll have to set the white balance on your camera. You'll generally get best results with the custom setting (if your camera offers it), but just picking the right setting for your lights (incandescent/fluorescent) will work fine too.


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