I need photo advice. I have a friend that will help me set up business cards, postcards, etc. I have a good camera (not digital) and even some photography training. I've done portraits, dance, and garden photography, and I'm pretty good. I know my ASAs and f-stops. I've even had my own darkroom.
But my glass pictures have no depth or sparkle. They look family snapshots! Can someone help me out with lighting and background advice--lots of it, please!
Photo help
Moderator: Brad Walker
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Cynthia
There's been quite a bit on this in the old archives regarding film and lights, cones to deflect light and such. Do a search and I expect you'll find several threads that will be helpful.
I shoot with a digital camera, outdoors on a cloudy day...but those don't turn out professional, just good and descriptive. Irid and dichro are still the hardest for me to find someone who can describe it photographically. My last slides were shot using natural light filtered through white plastic sheeting on a sunny day. The sheeting filtered the light making hot spots less of a problem and natural light worked well for color correctness too.
I still think they could be shot better, but this was the best shoot so far. Irids that are capped still didn't work well, but irids on the surface showed up very nicely.
http://community.webshots.com/user/oliverarts
You can take a look at my webshots album. The new slides are in the albums titled new work and more new work. Most all the other images were shot with my digital camera.
Not much help, but it might be a low tech way to try shooting next time around.
I shoot with a digital camera, outdoors on a cloudy day...but those don't turn out professional, just good and descriptive. Irid and dichro are still the hardest for me to find someone who can describe it photographically. My last slides were shot using natural light filtered through white plastic sheeting on a sunny day. The sheeting filtered the light making hot spots less of a problem and natural light worked well for color correctness too.
I still think they could be shot better, but this was the best shoot so far. Irids that are capped still didn't work well, but irids on the surface showed up very nicely.
http://community.webshots.com/user/oliverarts
You can take a look at my webshots album. The new slides are in the albums titled new work and more new work. Most all the other images were shot with my digital camera.
Not much help, but it might be a low tech way to try shooting next time around.
I promised a couple of people that I would show how I set up for photographs. I have been only moderately successful with slides because my background is always exposed. It is something that I will figure out the next time I shoot my work. In the meantime, I shoot digital and the only difference in quality that I have found between my digital and my slide images is the background. I think that I need to shorten my depth of field. Right now I’m shooting at f16. So anyway, I have one image of my setup and it needs a little explaining. First, I am using 3200k lights with an 80B blue filter. I took two sheets of Plexiglas and sandwiched two sheets of velum to make a large diffuser. I did this for both sides. I then mounded these onto a board and I use black cardboard, (pictured) to block any unwanted reflections I even have a large one that will fit over the top. In this case, I used Plexiglas, which I painted black to give me a highly reflective surface. I don’t necessarily recommend this as the static on the surface of the Plexiglas attracted tons of dust and I was constantly cleaning it. I have a background drape which I place about 8 feet behind the board. The view that I have here is from the background, looking through the “boxâ€