Photography for woodworkers

[Rob Millard]

I made a short web article on photography for woodworkers, which can be viewed at the following link.

http://home.woh.rr.com/federalfurniture/index.html
Rob Millard

[John Keeton]

Nice article! Photography would make a nice companion hobby to woodworking, for lots of reasons. But, I don't think I can deal with another obsessive hobby that cries out for every spare dollar I have! You did a great job putting a lot into a relatively short piece. This will be very helpful to those that want to do a much improved photo portfolio for marketing their craft.

[Rich Schneider]

Great article! I have just started gathering together equipment and backgrounds to photograph my projects as well. Another good/companion source of info is www.elmorephoto.com/Wood/PhotoWood.pdf. It is a pdf of a PowerPoint. When I was first looking for info specific to woodworkign photography it was the first thing I had found and it was useful too, but not as detailed in the explanations. Thanks for putting together this article because I suspect there are a lot of woodworkers who wish they understood more about improving their photography skills. I've seen a lot of poor photos online of otherwise high-quality, innovative wood projects.

[Mark Valsi]

Thanks !!!

[Jim Becker]

Thanks, Rob!!

[Eric DeSilva]

Nice article. One thing I'd add as a requirement--esp. if people are using slow shutter speeds is a decent tripod. You noted the mirror slap with long exposures, but I don't see how that would be different for long v. short exposures. What you may be seeing is the bounce from depressing the shutter button. I do a fair bit of night shooting -- 15-30s exposures--and one trick I've used for crisp exposures is to either use a remote shutter cable release, an electronic remote, or set the timer to trigger the shutter. For long exposures, you might also see if your dSLR has a "long exposure noise reduction" setting. Also turn off your auto-ISO setting--the camera may try to adjust the effective ISO of the CCD, which will result in much more noisy pictures.

I liked your backdrop. One thing I saw a while back--I think on instructables.com--was a set up a guy used in his garage for shooting bikes. He had the backdrop rolled up on a bar and out of the way, but he could roll it down like a blind when he wanted to shoot. If you shoot a lot of furniture, might be something to consider.

One final point... If you are shooting small objects, like boxes, look into a softbox. Essentially, the idea is to put the object into a box where the side panels act like diffusers. You don't get glare that way and see much more even lighting. Most commercial product shoots (even for large objects) use a flash inside a giant softbox that can be aimed at the object. I actually use a 36" x 40" softbox over a flash unit when shooting portraits--avoids having a light point source for reflections.

[Neil Lamens]

That's a very good article. If you've been at this awhile, much of what you've built is on slides and polaroids and just don't scan and look right. It had to take a special piece to bring in the photographer or go to him with the piece. Costly in the day.

Your article is perfect. There's no excuses, we all should be shooting our pieces today!!!!

[Rob Millard]

[quote=Eric DeSilva;766152]Nice article. One thing I'd add as a requirement--esp. if people are using slow shutter speeds is a decent tripod. You noted the mirror slap with long exposures, but I don't see how that would be different for long v. short exposures. What you may be seeing is the bounce from depressing the shutter button.


I did mention the need for a good tripod.
On the issue of mirror slap, the source I see is not from depressing the shutter, since I use the remote or a timer for all the shots I take, other than the ones used to evaluate exposure. I get blurring with a certain range of shutter speeds, which is caused by the vibration of the mirror moving out of the way. On the camera/lens I’m using now, that range is quite narrow. With a one second shutter speed there is nearly always some blurring, but at 1.3 seconds and slower there is none (I avoid shutter speeds over 2 seconds because even with the noise reduction feature, I see more noise than I’d like). The other camera I had didn’t seem to like a speed of 1.6 seconds, but it didn’t affect each shot, being more like one in three. That camera didn’t have mirror lock, in the classic sense but it did have a feature where the exposure was delayed a bit so the vibration had ceased. The camera I’m using now doesn’t have any mechanism for locking the mirror or delaying the shutter, so I have to watch the speed.
If I had the room, I’d make some kind of soft box
Rob Millard

[Eric DeSilva]

I did mention the need for a good tripod.

D'oh--I'm sorry I was thinking of the sidebar "essentials," but now realize that was camera features. I'm a beeeg advocate of tripods.

On the issue of mirror slap, the source I see is not from depressing the shutter, since I use the remote or a timer for all the shots I take, other than the ones used to evaluate exposure. I get blurring with a certain range of shutter speeds, which is caused by the vibration of the mirror moving out of the way.

Interesting. I've never run into it as an issue, but I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what I shoot that is in that kind of shutter speed range. I think I tend to the long 15-30 sec exposures, daylight, or I'm hauling out the strobes and the softbox. I'll have to experiment some... But, I'm still puzzled. The mirror has to flip up regardless of your shutter speed. If its a short exposure, you would think the effect would be magnified. Maybe it has to do with harmonics or something.

[Rick Levine]

Nice article! Photography would make a nice companion hobby to woodworking, for lots of reasons. But, I don't think I can deal with another obsessive hobby that cries out for every spare dollar I have! You did a great job putting a lot into a relatively short piece. This will be very helpful to those that want to do a much improved photo portfolio for marketing their craft.

Too late. Been there, done that! Bought my photo gear years before I bought my woodworking equipment though. I actually have more invested in photo equipment than tools and that is saying alot.

[Tom Maple]

D'oh--I'm sorry I was thinking of the sidebar "essentials," but now realize that was camera features. I'm a beeeg advocate of tripods.


Interesting. I've never run into it as an issue, but I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what I shoot that is in that kind of shutter speed range. I think I tend to the long 15-30 sec exposures, daylight, or I'm hauling out the strobes and the softbox. I'll have to experiment some... But, I'm still puzzled. The mirror has to flip up regardless of your shutter speed. If its a short exposure, you would think the effect would be magnified. Maybe it has to do with harmonics or something.

A faster shutter speed will minimize the effects of mirror slap just as it reduces movement when shooting fast action. The shutter is opened and closed so fast that the motion is not noticeable. Remember that a focal plane shutter is not fully open at any speed above X-synch. There is just a slit that travels across the film plane at higher speeds.
The longer shutter speeds you use at night negate the effect of the mirror slap because the vibration from the mirror has ended after one second (not an exact time, it's probably less) and is a small percentage of the total exposure time.

[Greg Funk]

But, I'm still puzzled. The mirror has to flip up regardless of your shutter speed. If its a short exposure, you would think the effect would be magnified. Maybe it has to do with harmonics or something.

I suspect the effects of 'mirror slap' are a function of the mass of the mirror and camera and are not uniform from one camera to another. If your exposure time is approximately the same as the duration of the vibration caused by the mirror you will have the most pronounced effects. If your exposure is significantly shorter or longer the effects will be less noticeable. In the case of very short exposures it doesn't matter much what the mirror is doing (or how steady you hold the camera) since the shutter isn't open very long. On very long exposures the small vibration caused by the mirror slap isn't long enough relative to the overall eposure to have an effect.

Greg

Edit: Sorry Tom I didn't see your explanation. I guess I am too slow at typing.

[Eric DeSilva]

I dug up a reasonably good explanation here: http://www.photozone.de/slr-vs-rangefinder

Maybe there was an subconscious reason I was avoiding anything but very fast or very slow shutter speeds...

[Glenn Clabo]

Rob,
Thank you. My "other" hobby is photography...and for some reason I really don't try to connect the two. This really brings it all home.

[Don Bullock]

Great article.

SWMBO will be very thankful to you. Now, I not only have all my woodworking tools to buy, then all the camera and photography equipment plus all my computer hardware and software to process the photographs --- she's going to kill me for sure.

Thanks for sharing.