Newbie Photography??

Alright ladies and gentlemen!

In the past few weeks, I've been looking to improve my photography skills, both in a quest to better capture my own knives, but also largely due to the inspiration all of the recent picture threads have caused for me. Both @WarrenB's pictures of his guyto, along with @XooMG's pictures of his ko-gyuto really got my wheels turning recently, so I asked a few friends here on the forum what kind of camera they would recommend in the $200 ball park.

The responses were quite varied, lol...from DSLR to point and shoot. In the meantime Robert helped me learn how to get the most out of my LG G3 cell phone camera by advising me on finding an app that would allow me to override at least the factory ISO setting, as well as the exposure value. The factory settings are HORRIBLE, and cause the software to heavily process out graininess, leaving a 'watercolor' look to all of the pictures. Needless to say, blended pixels are horrible for sharpness, so he recommended setting the ISO as low as it would go (100), and dropping the exposure value to -1.5 to -2 or so, while blasting in light (or using natural daylight). The results were night and day. I went from pictures like this with washed out hamon and poor details:



To pictures like these, with much clearer details, color, and a much more clearly visible hamon:



Tweaking a few more things with my lighting and 'studio' (you guys would laugh yourselves to death if you saw how I set this all up, lol), got me these:



I also built a smallish light box (12"x12"x12") this weekend to showcase a handle I made for the customer I'm sending it out to tomorrow, and using my cell phone again I captured these:



The jump in quality from the first to the last is pretty apparent, and with the help I received I think I've pushed the little phone camera to its limit. That said, looking at some of your incredible images...I still felt there was a lot more on the table, and started searching Amazon and my local Craigslist for a good deal on a dedicated digital camera. I went back and forth from high end point and shoot/bridge, to DSLR a number of times...researching to find the best value for the money, before finding a great deal on Craigslist for a Nikon D3200 DSLR with the two lens (18-55mm VR and 55-200mm VR) kit. For $275 I simply couldn't pass it up. I immediately came home and before even learning how to change the settings I paired it off against my cell phone.


LG G3 set at ISO100 and -2ev. Postwork to correct levels etc in Photoshop CS5.


Nikon D3200, 1/60 shutter speed, f4.5, and ISO800. With postwork the colors came out very rich, if a bit warmer than the LG.

And with the new settings (which probably still aren't right, but I was exploring the camera and trying to learn the functions and where they were lol):


Nikon D3200, 1/20 shutter speed, f7.1, and ISO100.

I'm much happier with the depth of field in the second picture, and the color is very accurate. I think there's still room for a lot of improvement though, as it took postwork (I didn't mess with the RAW file, just the .jpeg) to get things accurate. This was the original picture:



So...to get the conversation rolling, what kind of advice would you give a newbie photographer looking to first improve his close (but not 'macro') photgraphs with the given 18-55mm lens? I will probably very quickly begin taking outdoor pictures of the semi-rural area around my house, but for now I think working with the light box and various handles will be a good exercise to improve my understanding of my new camera.

Also, anyone else new to photography, please feel free to post up questions here!! This thread may die very quickly lol, but maybe we'll get lucky and get some good general digital photography information up instead .

 

Thanks for guiding us through your story. I am actually surprised by the quality of modern phone pictures, so that I haven't even bothered with a light tent set-up recently. But for real nice presentation shots, you are on the right way. I am too much of an amateur to give any fundamental recommendations. The one small thing I did find helpful was to use a gray card to set my white balance. That increased the color fidelity a little bit, although most cameras are doing a decent job with that.

Stefan

 

If you experiment with a few different types, a piece of white (not ultrawhite) office paper works as a fine WB reference. It's not really what grey cards were for (they are originally for exposure), but if one has grey cards, they can work fine as well. Specialized things like translucent lenscaps or plastic cards work somewhat but IMO are gimmicky and not really more practical than a trusty piece of paper.

 

Some other great pictures (and knives), not entirely unknown here : http://www.kitchenknifefora.com/threads/mr-magnus-knife-collection.581/

 

Without putting out for a real macro lens, you might give some cheap Ebay extension tubes a go. I got a set for my Pentax for $6. I paired it with my 35 year old 50mm lens and found that I could actually go beyond the 1:1 ratio when all three were joined together. Basically just hollow tubes with no optics that simply move your lens away from the sensor. Of course, these cheap tubes to not pass through any focus or aperture function, so the camera must be shot manual with a few changes to your menus. Or you can find an extension that does pass through the auto functions for a bit more.

Here is an article that explains it:

http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/...60801-macro-extension-tube-demonstration.html


here is a set that sold for your camera.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Macro-Exten...999?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item58c5b46d0f

 

Setting my white balance isn't even something I thought about...though I should have. For some reason I thought the camera should auto correct for that with the 5k 100w bulbs. I'll look into it for sure.

By the time I'm done here, I at least know I'll be able to nail handle photographs!!

By the way Stefan, you can kind of see what I mean in these pictures...about that bog oak! It's either a very special piece of wood, or I've been mistreating bog oak badly in the past lol.

I have Photoshop CS5, which seems to do an ok job with editing. I haven't tried the RAW files yet...though I intend to.

For blade photography, I absolutely agree that absorbers and reflectors are mandatory, particularly with hamon. Robert had shared that (Tamron?) article with me a few days ago, and it was incredibly helpful in aiding me to make better use of my lighting. I picked up a pair of sunscreen shades for truck sized windows from Wal Mart. They're portable, semi large, and one side is silver while the other is black. They were a HUGE help with capturing the hamon.

Warren offered to send me a Tamron 90mm f2.8 SP Di USD VC Macro Lens with a 'try or buy' option. HUGELY appreciated!! Seems like a top quality lens to be honest, and might be as close to perfect as it gets for knife/product photography.

 

Great kit to start Cris, I would say make the move to RAW sooner than later, You really notice the difference in post and it's the only way I shoot now! White balancing is one of the things that will drastically improve most pictures and something I recommend dialing in sooner than later, There are so many ways to adjust your pictures with camera settings and Ev. Get a small tripod set up a shot and just manipulate one exposure option at a time to get a better handle on what each does ( iso, shutter speed, aperture). Regardless your knives always look amazing! Have fun with it. @MotoMike cheers to fellow Pentaxian!

 

Thanks Jeffery! I'm looking up RAW editors now, as it seems my PS CS5 can't handle them, and won't install the plug in for some reason. Looks like GIMP and UFRaw.

 

Hm, not sure about PS5. 6 handles them beautifully and you can adjust all sorts of parameters like color temperature and exposure. Lightroom is a lot cheaper and can do this, too. I think Adobe are a bit ahead of the competition regarding RAW handling. But my Canon came with a pretty good RAW processor too. Maybe Nikon has something similar. I have no experience with it, but how about this: http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/Imaging-Software/ViewNX.html

 

Nothing wrong with working in raw, but don't bend over backwards for it.

 

I think this is the one you were meaning?

http://www.nikonusa.com/en/Nikon-Products/Product/Imaging-Software/ViewNX-i.html

I already butchered a picture in UFRaw lol. I'm relatively familiar with PS and .jpeg image editing, but will need to learn these others.

Absolutely...I think for most things I do the .jpeg will be sufficient...but it's still good to be familiar (if not actually proficient lol) with the other options available I'm sure.

 

Just remember that jpg format throws away data (interpolates) to make the file size smaller. If you want to retain the most detail save as a tiff with LZW compression. It's lossless and reduces the file size pretty well.

 

Good to know!

I think I found a use for that rayskin, lol:



Obviously none of these are professionally composed (or even lighted this time, need to move the lights more to the front). Lance's handle and rayskin make good practice for focus though, with all the various things going on color and contrast wise. I'm surprised how much the settings on the camera had to change to catch this picture due to the different size light box (60"x60"x60" tent vs 12"x12"x12" box). It seems quite bright inside the tent, but I had to open everything up a LOT. Like ISO800, way slow 1/15 shutter speed, and the same f7.1.

 

It does make an interesting background.

 

If you're on a tripod, don't push ISO at all. If it takes 1.3" of exposure time to get iso100 at f/11 (should be about the same exposure as your settings), let it take 1.3".

You should not need the full tent for an object like a handle if you want to use shadows to your advantage. The smaller box actually gives a bit more interest. If your goal is generic photos with minimal shadow, then you may want to shoot from a higher angle.

 

I haven't been using the tripod the last little while. It's hard for me to get any of the dynamics I'd been getting with the cell phone if I can't move the camera around. I've been hand holding and just being steady (both elbows locked down etc).

I agree completely. I mostly just wanted to use it to see how it would affect the camera settings (I took some pictures of James' knife too). It's going back anyhow as it has a hole in it out of the box, and while I know exactly what 60" (almost 2 meters) is in length, apparently it's a bit hard to picture as a cube until the thing blows up in the middle of your living room and barely leaves room to walk around it lol. I'll probably pick up the 40" one, which will have the added benefit of improving my light's effectiveness.

Once Warren's macro lens gets here, I think a lot of what I'm doing right now will be easier. You were right in that the 18-55mm lens is a bit wrong for my purposes. With more practice and skill I could probably work around it more easily. Right now it's still a bit awkward to figure out camera distance, focal distance, then get all the settings right as well. Then when I want to change positions, I only have to change everything I'd figured out too.

 

I think I enjoy postwork as much or more than the photography, lol.


Original.


Most accurate color wise.


With a bit of darkening for drama/impact/interest.

Btw, thanks Lance for ordering the excellent photography subject lol. The colors, contrast, facets, etc all make for a really cool challenge to capture. The bog oak has such subtle and deep color shift in brown and black throughout, but the way the surface is affected by light tries to hide it. At the same time, the mammoth tooth is just in your face contrast and a real color challenge.

 

It really is quite striking when you look at the mammoth tooth close up. There's every color imaginable in it. Nice job.

 

There is so much awesome in this thread I can't take it all in.

I'm going on a coffee break.

 

I agree! Everyone's help is very much appreciated...and is definitely the most awesome thing in this post!!

And on a semi related note...am I the only newbie photographer around here lol?

Anyhow, I was able to push the 18-55mm lens about as far into the macro range as it would go this evening I think. I put the settings on auto, but overrode the flash. It kept saying it was too dark, despite the three 100w 5000k lights? Yet somehow all my pictures were blown out, lol. I was able to correct most of them...but I'd like to get to a point where the pictures are solid as/is.

Anyhow, here's the two shots I mean:


How I did it was to turn off auto focus, then back up to the point where being fully zoomed in met the rough focal point. I fine tuned the focus manually from there, and these were what was in my live viewfinder. For you foreign guys, a US quarter is about 1.75mm thick. I'm guessing there's a more efficient way to do this? Anyhow, it was cool to get some close up shots.

By the way, this was the light setup I made tonight:



I couldn't get enough light into the 60" tent no matter what I did, so I packed it up and spent 30 minutes doing this in the spare room. It actually worked semi ok...though I still think there's a better way to go about things, lol. Like I said, all of the pictures were really bright this time around with the camera set on auto with no flash. The shutter speed was still quite long as well.

Anyhow, that's it for today's work. I'm off to bed. I have an early day tomorrow finishing up Lance's suji (polishing...yay!) and getting James' gyuto sent out . I'll surely get some more photography practice in tomorrow evening though!