Lighting for taking watch pix

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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by scooter »

Has the cat been evicted?

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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

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scooter wrote:Has the cat been evicted?

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Yep. There's always a price to pay.
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by gatehealing »

downer wrote:
Having all that light is a great starting point. All the way to f/20 at ISO400 and still managed 1/5 second...

Tomorrow's task will be to experiment with some additional directional light. And to clean the BBR. :D
HEY!! Here's an idea that would probably be helpful for all of us: when you get great shots, lets compile a "Camera Settings Gallery" (F stop, exposure, white balance etc, lighting specs) so others can quickly go find those features on their camera and learn by doing!

Thoughts? I'm thinking that settings for Texture, Warmth, Close-ups, Reflection control (polarized filter helps here), Color 'pop' etc would be nice.

Jon
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by gatehealing »

scooter wrote:akirk

I have to say that I found that very helpful.

Thank you.

scooter
Agreed. A sticky note of Akirks post would be super handy for this thread (and/or the Camera settings gallery--see my other comment)
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by akirk »

gatehealing wrote:
downer wrote:
Having all that light is a great starting point. All the way to f/20 at ISO400 and still managed 1/5 second...

Tomorrow's task will be to experiment with some additional directional light. And to clean the BBR. :D
HEY!! Here's an idea that would probably be helpful for all of us: when you get great shots, lets compile a "Camera Settings Gallery" (F stop, exposure, white balance etc, lighting specs) so others can quickly go find those features on their camera and learn by doing!

Thoughts? I'm thinking that settings for Texture, Warmth, Close-ups, Reflection control (polarized filter helps here), Color 'pop' etc would be nice.

Jon
This doesn't work quite as well as you might hope...

white balance settings for example work with the light present, they are not absolute - so a picture on the slightly warm side of normal might need a setting of only 4000K in one lighting scenario, but 6500K in another - i.e. it is the WB setting combined with the nature of the light that gives the colour balance - not one or the other... besides, WB is easy - stick it on auto and then in Lightroom, just click auto WB and it will generally be accurate - you need to have your screen(s) calibrated with a hardware calibration device though to really be accurate...

with experience you can start to read a photo, for example:

roughly what f-stop was used here:
Image

and by comparison - what f-stop here:
Image

if you drag these photos onto your desktop - right click and look at the properties > details - most photos will contain their EXIF (settings)... so:

photo 1 above is:
- f4
- 1/60
- ISO 400
- 105 mm
- ev +0.3

photo 2 is:
- f8
- 1/60
- ISO 400
- 105 mm

so some analysis:
f-stop - bigger number on the second photo = 'smaller aperture' (hole in the lense) - easiest way to remember though is bigger number = more in focus.
focus depth (dof = depth of field) is also a factor of the camera lense length, and distance to subject, so the longer the lense / further away you are, the less dof for the same f-stop. the EXIF on these photos shows 105mm which is almost universally a fixed length macro lense (in my case a sigma 105 macro), so with a macro, focusing distance is much closer which also reduces dof :D
the type of camera and sensor also affects this and the EXIF shows that I am using D7100s - I swapped from D3s cameras when I gave myself tennis elbow due to the weight! These 'amateur' cameras are fantastic, and much smaller. Their sensors and processing system allows a very high ISO performance (we used to shoot film up to c. 1600 - these are happy at over 25,000 ISO!) so I run the cameras on auto-ISO with a minimum shutter speed of 1/60 - hence the iso and shutter speed - as it was on a tripod, I could have gone slower and lower ISO - but ISO 400 is impossible to detect over ISO 100.

So, we can pull that information out - and using an EXIF reader may gain us more information if in the photo...
but also, we can look at the images, hopefully you can see the difference in depth of field, the C15 fades into the background more rapidly, the C20 is in focus for longer... You can read the lighting by looking at the shadows (any guesses?) it will be more or less obvious in different photos - though if too obvious it is a bad photo...

If folks want to learn about photography I am sure that posting photos for comment would work well - I am not the only photographer on here professional or otherwise so plenty of people who can comment and suggest things to try...

It is surprisingly not difficult once you get a few basics sorted out...

Alasdair
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

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Thanks akirk. I guess the pressing question is - when should i get a cat ?
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

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blowfish89 wrote:I guess the pressing question is - when should i get a cat ?
Soon...and a rescue of course. :)
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by chrisw »

I think this could be a really useful thread, I have been able to take some reasonable watch pictures but the setup has ended up far to complicated and time consuming. I see many pictures on this and other forums that are good quality and taken with a mobile phone/ tablet. I don't particularly want to use either but it would be nice to achieve good results with a decent camera and a small simple amount of other kit.
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by vikingdrvr »

not long after joining this forum and seeing such beautiful watch pics, I bought one of the tent systems off ebay. I was surprised at how much time it took me to do a shoot, but the worst part was they really didn't seem that much better than the cell phone shots. Needless to say, it's been in the storage room and it's been phone pics ever since. For me, it's just too time consuming...may be a future retirement project though!
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by akirk »

the time in doing a shoot is in the setup if using lighting kit...
but generally speaking it is simply about looking for light / keeping the composition simple - a watch photo should take no more than 30 seconds to set up and 30 seconds to shoot...

If you have a window sill painted white then that works well
or a sheet of A4 / A3 in white in the front doorway of your house
watch on the surface - snap.

with lighting, a good starting point is to look at light coming into somewhere - so photographing a person - stick them in a window opening / door opening and generally speaking the lighting will be good... it automatically gives you the differentil light you want... I used to have pro studio kit, but sold it as I didn't use it enough - I photograph people mainly and it is simply about learning to read light - you rarely need to add light...

so as an exercise - grab a person (or teddy bear for those without cats!) sit said subject on your front door step and try the following photos:

photograph them from inside the house
photograph them from outside the house

for each - have them sitting straight on / 45 degrees either way
have the head straight on / tilted up / tilted down

have a look at the photos - start to see where the light is hitting...

the biggest thing though that makes a photo look professional is content / composition...
put a watch on a table in a room - photograph it on a wide setting - look at the photo, you will see a lot of irrelevant items in the room to improve this - either focus in more on the watch - or move / change the context to fit the watch better... there is a diagram here that explains much of this:
http://www.snipephotos.com/information/ ... ession.pdf
(NB written for a photography course, so ignore the acronyms on the top line)

a good example might be cincfleet's recent order of the submarine service C60 - in that thread he shows us a framed display of medals and other memorabilia... if we look at context:
- watch on its own is a great photo
- watch with that framed picture is deeper context
- watch on his wrist in uniform with that picture adds more context...
- how else might we add context - perhaps the watch in the control room of a submarine - or sitting on a table with a uniform cap with a submarine out of focus in the background leaving to go to sea...

so think carefully about what is in the photo...
those who are rated highly on here for their photos have a simple formula which anyone could repeat:
- simple but effective lighting
- watch in focus (sometimes a shallow focus to throw the background out of focus
- simple composition, where more complex, the additional content is relevant...

Alasdair
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by gatehealing »

Hey Alasdair,

You manage to put a great deal of this in terms that I actually understand (bigger the F stop, the more that's in focus, etc). Any other pearls that you have like this, I'd love to see--same with any websites, books, articles that your writing style is similar to.

Thanks again for all of the time you put in to these responses. I know I'm not the only one that's probably printing out this thread and putting it in my camera bag!

Jon
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by theaub »

Alasdair's reply is brilliant - thanks. If I could prevail upon him: these days I don't have a camera; I tend to use just my iPhone or iPad. Do you have any tips for users like me when taking these kinds of photos?
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by akirk »

I could add loads :) I have various letters for photography ;) and have taught / mentored pros internationally for years - but there becomes the danger that it is overwhelming / too complex...

some thoughts:
- there are loads of good photography forums - in the same way that coming on here teaches a lot about watches through peer discussion, so a good photography forum would pay dividends in your photography...
- photography is best learned through taking photos and then critiquing them

I would suggest a simple off-topic thread on here for watch photography (ideally a sub-forum if the mods were happy as you could then have a thread for each person's photography if more than one wanted to... ) and simply go out take a photo / a couple of photos - post them and the rules are simple:
- the photographer has to post technical settings
- the photographer has to post their own critique / self-analysis first
- then others can comment
- anyone can comment
- all comments are a personal view and not 'absolute'
- all comments are valid
- the photographer agrees to take on board those comments and try the photo again
Such an approach will undoubtedly help folks improve...
There are a number of very good photographers on here who I am sure would happily comment...

ref. ipad / iphone - not an issue, I use my iphone a lot - I have just returned from three days in Spain photographing professionally for a client - and as well as photos a book will be produced - I am sure that some of my iphone photos will be in there as well as those from my cameras.. the same principles apply - the same exercises can be carried out - there is less ability to tweak settings / some technology differences, but good photos are still very possible - and I suspect far more people use a mobile then a DSLR

Alasdair
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Re: Lighting for taking watch pix

Post by theaub »

I like the idea of a photo sub forum very much. I guess with phone cameras getting more sophisticated (I'm getting used to the iPhone 6), using some handy techniques and looking at examples would be very helpful.
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