New Skinner

[Eli Jensen]

So there are a lot of things that I think could have gone better, but overall I'm satisfied. D2 blade, flat grind, 304 guard, bolsters, and pins. Cocobolo. My very first sheath and first pictures with my new light box I made.

[Ray Rogers]

Very nice, Eli! Especially good for a first sheath.

On the pictures, you might want to trim the open space around the subject, that reduces the size (in bytes) of the photo and makes the knife seem 'closer' to the viewer. Also, the pics seem a bit under exposed ...

[Eli Jensen]

Yes, the last one there is even a little bit of tape on the bottom. Thats no good. The camera I used was my wife's cheap digital. Not sure how to fix the problem without buying a better camera?

[Ray Rogers]

You said you built a light box, such a box should have a light source (not a flash on your camera). The light source should be light bulbs in the daylight temperature range (actual white light). All you need is enough light and the camera you have will work fine. These lights should be behind a diffuser such as a white bed sheet or a white plastic bag to avoid undesirable specular highlights on the subject. As for trimming the photos, that's a job for Photoshop or some similar application ....

[Eli Jensen]

I used white tissue paper and two 150 watt clear light bulbs. The picture on the camera is fine, until i take the picture and then it is underexposed

[Ray Rogers]

Clear light bulbs are not likely to be white light. You'll need to ask at the hardware store for white light bulbs in the 5500 Kelvin temperature range. That's a daylight colored light so your camera won't have to try to make an automatic color correction which it doesn't seem to being doing well right now. As for the two 150 watt bulbs there are several things to consider. The intensity of light falls off in proportion to the square of the distance from the source to the subject. Generally, that just means that the bulbs need to be fairly close to the subject or you need more bulbs. The sensitivity of your camera depends on the stop setting of your lens which, on fixed lens digital cameras is usually about a 3.5 f on a wide angle lens. That's not bad but it does require a fair amount of light. The other consideration is the ISO (or ASA) rating of your film. Digital cameras don't have film, of course, but many of them do have a setting that simulates a film speed, usually defaulting to 100 ASA. If you can find a setting like this in the camera's menu, then choose a higher setting which will make the camera more sensitive to the light that you already have available ....