Embarrasing but this is it.

[Bob Warner]

Hey guys, looking for a little help. This is straight out of the camera.



I used five 100W "Daylight" bulbs. Four shining through some of that plastic stuff they hang under flourscent lights. The fifth was shining through some more from a different angle. I forgot and left the shop lights on and they are flourscent so maybe they overpowered the daylight bulbs.

This is after trying to improve it with Photoshop 7 that a friend has. Better but the blade looks dirty and I got reflections that I did not see when looking through the camera.



I know there are several things wrong like the back pin out of focus, etc... I just want to figure out how to take a semi close shot then I will work on the little stuff. I am way to far from worrying about the little things yet.

Any suggestions?

[SharpByCoop]

First off, congrats on a great looking knife. Looks like something we'd all like!

Well, you've dodged the bullet for a lonnnnng time, but this shot is promising. Best Bob Warner pic I've seen in a while. That said, now I'm going to rip it to shreds....!

You asked!


We need to know more: What camera?

1. OK, even though they are daylight bulbs, there is still quite a bit of yellow cast. I would try it without the shop lights, and maybe even try it with the shop fluorescents alone for a look. Regardless, you *can* remove the tint in PS, but it's good to minimize this right at the source.

2. The low angle you shot it at is creating a glow or halo around the knife. Try shooting it more flat. Even the rug is picking up the reflection. The blade is a little too 'hot'. Back up the lights or use another diffuser.

3. 'Straight out of the camera'... What image size did you start with? Only 640? If not in your resizing and file saving, the image is so JPG compressed that it is degraded, losing detail. Shoot at a minimum of 1260 pixel wide and downsize from there. Or save it without compressing it as much.

4. Composition: Never discount the value of a well-set-up shot. Pay attention to angles, cropping, and the background. In your image the background grabs your attention, and the knife is too small, comparatively.

5. The reworked version looks it. To the max. That rug was never that color blue. So already I'm suspicious... :cool:.

Biggest problem is lighting and resolution--either out of the camera, or post-processed. Take a pic of your setup so we can see.

Now, I never miss an opportunity to 'help'. Here is what I did with your pic.:



I rotated it to a better angle. Now I can read your mark. I cloned the background to fill in the missing corners after rotation. Then I auto adjusted the entire image. I outlined just the blade and desaturated it, and touched up the rear pin. All-in-all a pretty lousy effort. You should call a pro.

Try again and repost. I'm witcha.

Coop

[Bob Warner]

First off I want to thank anyone that chimes in here.

The setup is typical Bob Warner. How many of you had to WELD to make your light box? Yep, I welded.

I am sick as a dog but will try to get outside tomorrow for a few more attempts. I am considering replacing the plastic light cover with a sheet.

The blue shirt is really pretty blue but I must be color stupid or something as I tried to get the color to the same color of blue. Forget that.

The camera is an inexpensive Vivitar "ViviCam 3615" 2.1 Mega Pixel with macro.

The knife really %@%$ed me off. The hamon line looks a lot better in person. The blade looks clean and not smudgy but I think that is the reflection of the plastic stuff (why I think a sheet will help.

Maybe the lights need to be backed off a little also, they are only about a foot and a half from the knife.

We will se what tomorrow brings. I will have to pick another knife possibly since this one is on the way to a big mall and hopefully will sell before Christmas.

I don't have any mirror polished ones right now so I don't know what I will do. I may use a butter knife out of the kitchen. My goal is the picture, not the knife.

Editied to add-------

Original picture size outof the camera is 1600 X 1200 and comes out as a .jpg file.

[Bob Warner]

OK, Round two. I am posting a link because the photo is large and has a large file size.

http://www.warnerknives.com/CKD/002.jpg

This photo was taken the same way as the other but the shop lights were off. There were four 100W daylight bulbs shining through the diffuser and one over me left shoulder.

I took the picture looking down more on the knife and reflecting the diffuser in the blade. Guess what? TOO bright. But not yellow. I guess I need to find an unlit spot to reflect against.

I put an epoxy pack in the picture so that the colors can be ajusted to make it a good yellow, then everythings else should be correct.

Still sick and will try to go out again tomorrow and rearrange to avoid the bright blade.

Also have some trouble with the focus, can't seem to get REALLY clear.

Edited to add............
The picture came up really big (full size) then after the entire thing loaded, Explorer made it smaller and the quality was degraded. NOW WHAT??????

[Chuck Burrows]

The picture came up really big (full size) then after the entire thing loaded, Explorer made it smaller and the quality was degraded. NOW WHAT??????

This one should be easier to fix- in IE Click on Tools, Internet Options, Advanced - Scroll down to the Multimedia section and make sure the "Enable Automatic Image Resizing is turned off (no check mark)" While you're at turn off the ####ed image toolbar - can't stand that thing - right click works just fine. If need be IE and reboot (you have to if you turned off the image toolbar). That should fix it.

Rather than a white sheet - try some natural muslin - the off white stuff. Make sure it's stretched tight - I've found when using a cloth diffuser that folds/wrinkles will cause shadows, especially on high polished blades. I would not use a light coming in over your shoulder - instead try using a mirror to bounce the diffused light back onto the blade (Point Seven uses that trick) or a piece of white poster board - a Jim Cooper trick. Play with the angles of mirror or board until it looks good. Take a few shots and then move things around a bit - I sometimes take 20-30 shots to get one good one - although with my newest setup I'm down to more like 5-10 at most. But moving things around even a tad and taking more never hurts - sometimes that 30th shot is just the one you were looking for. I've watched all kinds of pros over the years and most shoot up scads of film - or so it seemed - to get that one shot.

Try moving your lights around a bit too - that yellow glare seems to be coming off the yellow of the grip so move the lights so they aren't so bright on that side - the reflectors will help keep down shadows - yet a few shadows can add drama to your shot. Try lighting from one or two sides only and use the reflector to keep the shadows from being too dark. You can also bounce the light off another surface (wall, hanging sheet etc) rather than having it shine directly through the box. In fact all of my recent photos are taken with bounced light - white ceiling and off white walls in a corner - rather than using a box. Tai Goo takes his with a similar setup using natural light from a louver blind window.

Sharpness - do you have a way to sharpen things up in your image software - notice in Jim's post how he talked about using the sharpen tool?

Been down with the bug myself so take care Bob.

[Chuck Burrows]

Bob like Coop I took the liberty to play in Photoshop 7.0 a bit.

Cropped it and then did Auto Adjust, rezized it to 600x400, sharpened at around 75%, adjusted brightness and contrast a bit and then desaturated the colors just a tiny bit - which removed quite a bit of the glare and actually "richened" the colors in the grip. The blade is still too "bright" and I would try to fix that with your setup first - you could remove the glare with photo software as Coop did with the other image - but I wanted you to see what you had with just some real basic tweaking.
Overall though (except for the glare and the white triangle along the side, which is a matter of lining things up when shooting) - the base photo wasn't that bad - mainly just too much glare. Adjusting your light source and using some bounced light from the front should solve much of that. After that some basic tweaking with software and you will have a decent web image.

One thing to remeber is that everybodies computer monitors/graphics cards "see" images differently so all you can really do is make it look good on yours and keep your fingers crossed.

[Bob Warner]

Chuck,

That triangle is a piece of paper. I wanted to get white in there so I can see if white came out white.

What is irritating to me is that when I get all set up to snap the shot, it looks perfect to my eye, then comes out all hosed up.

I will rearrange again in the next day or two.

[Chuck Burrows]

I realized that afterwards. Thought at first it was a corner of the tent.

Get well - I just went out to make sure my car would start for tomorrow's trip to town and had to turn my auto choke into a manual one!:evil :evil

[murrphy]

Bob--for diffusion material, as I have mentioned many times, use white spandex. it will allow you to stretch it taut.

When you say the bulbs are 100W, it lead me to believe they are not Daylight Flourescents. Some bulbs say that, particularily the long bulbs but the screw in true Daylight Flourescents are only 15w=50 bulbs and are 6700Kelvin.

If you have a bulb with a lower K rating, you will get a yellow image unless you try incandescent or whitebalance with your camera and why do that when by using the correct bulb and auto, you will simplify you life and shooting.

I'm going to include a recent image I did of a knife just received in the past week and it has very minimal image editing done to it.

[KNAdmin]

Murray,

For the record, the image you posted is considered "highly" edited.


Alex

[murrphy]

Alex, each piece of the puzzle though is done in camera with only minimal adjustments in image editing software. Heck, minimal adjustments are all I'm capable of so I have to do the best I can with the camera.

I can't do what Coop can with an image and turn it around and improve parts of it, so by using simplified lighting and the old KISS principle, decent images can be created which will provide a maker or collector with the ability to have images on his site which are better than the majority of images availabe currently promoting knives.

[Bob Warner]

Ok, I took these this morning. ALL I did to them was to auto adjust them and save for web. I think they are better but not really good yet. These were taken on my kitchen table with the window open. The ceiling is white and I did not use the flash.

Blast them!!!!!!

[Chuck Burrows]

Bob-
There is nothing really bad about any of those shots that a little extra image software tweaking won't help/cure. There are some "artifacts" - example: those little squigglys around your name and that could be due to the compression level you are using for saving the images at.

Even though the second image is the "best" to my eye - one thing I would recommend is to use a "simpler" more neutral background until you get the knack anyway. One of your best friends can be the local flooring store/stores - schmooze them a while and then see if they will save their tile samples - both ceramic and plastic - for you. Almost all flooring stores discard - as in throw away - their samples on a regular basis. The larger sizes 14" up to to 24" - make great backgrounds for knives. Even if you have to buy a few now and again you usually won't be out max $5.00 per sample. Other good back ground materials are wallpaper samples and fabric remnants - best thing with any background is to follow the KISS sample, at least until you learn your camera's capabilities.

Once you get a selection of different backgrounds on hand then match the background to the knife - take a couple of photos with something that looks good and if it doesn't work than try another.
Note how Murray's background enhances rather than detracts from the knife. The background in fact is close in color/texture to the darker parts of the knife - yet it compliments the overall layout and does not pull your eye away from the "center".

Anyway hope this helps.

[SharpByCoop]

Bob, they're all showing some promise. Yup, the backgrounds are the biggest drawback, at this point.

I went into the Home Depot with a sharp knife and a sob-story: I told the sales clerk at the wallpaper section about my pregnant wife and our upcoming first-born keeping her away from the visit to redecorate. "Could I PLEEEAASE have a few samples of these opened wallpapers to show her for our den?"

With that approved, I cut off about 5-6 slabs of paper to bring home to show the missus. They never got upstairs, as I quickly used them for some fantastic shots! You just got to bend the rules on occasion.

Looking forward to more of your improved work.

Coop

[murrphy]

Bob--take a look at Coops backgrounds and see how the simplistic background does not distract from the image. I don't know if you have looked at the Competition images but Rich Slaughter does some nice background work too.

Using daylight--fine if you choose the right time of day with the daylight coming from the North side window.

If you look at your images, notice that they are cyan in color. This can be corrected in imaging software generally. However, by using Daylight flourescent (6700Kelvin) bulbs, you can now photograph at all hours and not be concerned about color balance. Even easier than using white balance.

Towel material is not good either as it affects resolution from what I have learned. Have as little distraction from the subject as you can.

When you first start, keep it simple. too often newbies want to get "creative" and complicated and fail to create just a nice image of the product they are trying to show.

People looking at your knives are not admiring the photography as you are not a photographer, but rather want to see a good representation of what you have avaialble--fine custom knives.

Keep shooting images and post them and we will all try to help.