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September 27, 2007
[ PHOTOGRAPHING COLLECTABLES ]
WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT IT? A daggy little television program from Tasmania, put up on ABC TV as an off-season filler, has become the biggest hit since Gardening Australia. One refers, of course, to The Collectors.
This little charmer has brought the most astonishing range of collectors and collections out of their back rooms and sheds to show off everything from Royal Doulton Chamber Pots to Early Fake Rolex Watches.
The Collectors has a web site with a “show and tell” gallery for anyone to put up pictures of their precious objets d’art. The idea is that you take pictures of your collection and upload them to the site, and it’s a pity that the quality of the photography is pretty ordinary.
Another collectors’ web site, collectZing has been started up by Melbourne web designers David and Fiona Eedle, with international aspirations. The site is very new and so far the quality of the pictures is on a par with the ABC gallery.
It occurs to us that it is timely to give some advice on how best to photograph small three dimensional objects. It is so easy to do well that it is hardly worth the effort of doing it badly. Anyone with a decent digital camera and time to spare can take pictures of evenly lit objects that seem to float in space, free of nasty hot spots and inky shadows and sharp as a tack from front to back. All you need is a camera, a tripod and a light tent.
The light tent in the picture above is a product available from shops that supply equipment to professionals. It is called an Interfit Light Tent and costs $100.
But look at it! It’s only a cube frame with some translucent material draped over it. The same effect can be achieved with a cardboard box big enough to hold the collectables to be photographed, with big holes in three sides and covered with tracing paper or plain sheeting material. Then cut a piece of stiff card to form a platform inside the box that curves from the front edge to the top back corner.
Put the tent in the sunlight – shade or overcast is best – place the object on the platform and you’ve got a perfect, diffused lighting environment in which the toy train will throw only the softest of shadows onto the white card and all its fine details will stand out.
Set up the camera on the tripod, select Aperture Priority mode (if you are able) and set the aperture to the smallest opening, to achieve the greatest depth of field and keep the entire object in focus.
The camera automatically adjusts the shutter speed, and it will be slow. So to avoid camera shake either use a remote shutter release (generally only available on digital SLRs and some top compacts) or put the camera on self timer so that you are not touching it when the shutter releases. Take three shots – one at the settings calculated by the camera, one one stop under exposed and one at one stop over. Voila! A product shot as good as the pros can make in the studio.
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Posted by terry at September 27, 2007 02:24 AM
Worth Checking Out
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