Shooting Pickup Porn

[ken]

How do you get rid of reflections like the ones on a pickup's metal cover? I have a great shot of a Tele rhythm pickup cover I took where you can see me and the camera very nicely in the photo.

Getting back to the thread's title- Say you're shooting a pickup with a shiny metal cover.
You could position a nude model or picture of a nekkid lady so she's reflected in that cover.
Ya know, like, subliminal advertising....
Just a thought.

Like I said in the top quote... I didn't want to scare my customers away looking at the reflection in my Tele cover. It's hard enough to get customers nowadays without scaring them all off. Maybe a nice photo of Marilyn Monroe or something would work? <kidding>

ken

[David Schwab]

Like I said in the top quote... I didn't want to scare my customers away looking at the reflection in my Tele cover. It's hard enough to get customers nowadays without scaring them all off. Maybe a nice photo of Marilyn Monroe or something would work? <kidding>

Just don't do like the "teapot man" did.

[StarryNight]

You need to use aperture priority on the camera and many small point and shoot cameras don't have this option. You need aperture priority so you can use a small f-stop so you get as much of the product in focus as possible. Point and shoot cameras almost always default to wide apertures in macro mode so part of your product is in focus but most isn't. In general the smaller the f-stop the more will be in focus, your focus point will then have 1/3 of the focus field in front and 2/3's in back of the focus point will be in focus. .

just to clarify (har har), the higher the f-stop number the more will be in focus in your shot - and the aperture ring is at its most closed. I.e. An f-stop of 22 give a very large depth of field and the aperture ring is closed tight like a pinhole. Low f-stop number means wide open aperture which means narrow depth of field. If you're shooting a pickup at a low angle you actually might want a lower f-stop number (wider aperture) to make the fore and background out of focus. If you're shooting from above the depth of field isn't as important and you may need to adjust your aperture for the sake of more or less light. I.e. if you're shooting without a tripod at a high angle you may want a lower aperture number so the aperture ring is more open which lets more light in, which equals a faster shutter speed, and reduces the chances of a blurry image due to hand shaking.

[ken]

just to clarify (har har), the higher the f-stop number the more will be in focus in your shot - and the aperture ring is at its most closed. I.e. An f-stop of 22 give a very large depth of field and the aperture ring is closed tight like a pinhole. Low f-stop number means wide open aperture which means narrow depth of field.

So... what you're saying is that the higher the f-stop the greater the depth of field or the more depth of the object you're photographing will be in focus. For example, you're taking a photo of a friend in front of a mountain. A low f-stop would make the friend sharp in the photo but the mountain would be blurry. A high f-stop would be used to bring both the friend and the mountain in sharp focus. Is this right?

Just don't do like the "teapot man" did.

David, I googled 'teapot man'. I saw the photo. EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWW. No more photos for me, I have to go boil my eyes or something...

ken

[David Schwab]

So... what you're saying is that the higher the f-stop the greater the depth of field or the more depth of the object you're photographing will be in focus. For example, you're taking a photo of a friend in front of a mountain. A low f-stop would make the friend sharp in the photo but the mountain would be blurry. A high f-stop would be used to bring both the friend and the mountain in sharp focus. Is this right?

Think of a pin hole camera. it's a tiny little pin hole and they have infinite depth of field. As you open up the aperture to allow more light, you have a shallow depth of field.

So as long as your subject is not moving, you can use a higher ƒ-stop and a longer exposure.

Depth of field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[its.cabs]

That's correct, Ken. For close up detail shots, most folks use a smaller f-stop. Also very helpful is using a tripod or mount, and time released shutter, if available. Many new digital cameras have great MACRO settings for close ups, and can produce very clear, highly detailed shots. Buen Lucha... cabs

[Joe Gwinn]

Think of a pin hole camera. it's a tiny little pin hole and they have infinite depth of field. As you open up the aperture to allow more light, you have a shallow depth of field.

So as long as your subject is not moving, you can use a higher ƒ-stop and a longer exposure.

Depth of field - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I found that a cheap studio flash made all the difference, because it produced enough light that I could have sufficient depth of field and yet handhold the camera, so I could move around looking for the best angle. No flash on the camera is powerful enough.

War story: When my kid sister got married many years ago, she had a party with her girlfriends the night before, at my parents' house, which has a cathedral ceiling in the living room. I wanted to take candids of her friends, so I rented a big atom-bomb commercial studio flash and set it up in the corner, with the flash shooting upwards, lighting up about 1/4 of the ceiling. On my 35mm camera was a ~100mm (zoom?) lens and a little pipsqueak flash. When I took a picture, the little flash triggered the atom bomb flash, which lit the whole room up. I could take headshots from 20' away, and people soon lost track of me because the big flash was in the corner. The pictures were excellent, and the lighting looked as if we were outside on a cloudy-bright day.

[Possum]

You don't need a flash though for table top photography, this is why you need a tripod and use the self timer, because the shutter speeds will be very low, too low to hand hold the camera. The problem with using a flash in this situation is you can't see the results until you actually take a photo, so you waste alot of time setting things up. With light bulbs you can see in real time how your lighting looks and can see the effects of bounce cards, mirrors, black cards etc.
Something like this is a good purchase, but it also shows you how you could easily make something just as effective for practically no money:
Photo Studio In a Box

[David Schwab]

My brother always used flashes when shooting objects, like jewelry and stuff. They weren't direct lighting, but that's how he used to do it. You can also do it with regular lamps. That gets hot after a while!

Like when I was shooting old album covers at Sony Music for their digital arching project. It was like an oven in there! I wish I had some flashes instead.



For those technically inclined, the Hasselblad had a digital back, and went to an Apple laptop which did the capturing and image processing.

On a side note, I got to handle and scan some really cool originals during that project, like this transparency.

[ken]

On a side note, I got to handle and scan some really cool originals during that project, like this transparency.

Ohhh SURE David, keep the good photos for yourself...

What would be a good basic setup for somebody like me who doesn't have years of pro photography experience, yet doesn't want their photos to look
like the 'teapot man' took them?

ken

[salvarsan]

Q: How do you get to Carnegie Hall?
A: Practice, practice, practice.

Ditto for doing camera work.
Select the best from 600-700 images.
Take a week learning how to bounce light, and
how to underexpose 1/2 stop for deeper color.

[David Schwab]

Ohhh SURE David, keep the good photos for yourself...

Hey, I just shared one, right?

I had to be sneaky with a few Michael Jackson scans because they were watching me! lol

Like this hand written note.



I'll post a few more when I get a chance. I have to find where I put them.

What would be a good basic setup for somebody like me who doesn't have years of pro photography experience, yet doesn't want their photos to look
like the 'teapot man' took them?

Don't take photos in the nude?

[Possum]

Ken the Micromark setup is foolproof, but the cheaper the camera, the less options you have, F stop abilitiy doesn't come on cheap cameras unfortunately. So you want to do overhead shots and keep everything on one plane. If you shoot low like 45 degree angle with one pickup lying in front of another one you won't get the depth of field you need and if you focus on the back pickup the front will be out of focus. One way around it that sometimes works is move the camera way back and zoom in. Pretty much all product photography used to be done with flash, and large soft box units, big money to buy that stuff. Flash is better for film and probably even now the super pro guys probably still shoot transparencies. But maybe, not, I don't really know what the commercial guys are doing these days or if large format film is even being used now. When I art directed the EMG full color catalog shoot back in the early 90's, we shot full 8x10 transparency on a view camera, takes a real pro to use those, and his lighting techniques were amazing.

[ken]

I had to be sneaky with a few Michael Jackson scans because they were watching me! lol

Like this hand written note.

David, was this note written by Michael Jackson? If it was the creepy factor was enormous. I wonder what the scratched out word was in the last sentence?

I have a Nikon Coolpix 5700 here somewhere, a reasonably nice camera in its day but it only has 5 megapixels. It supposedly has F stop ability and other toys, but as usual I can't find the manual to save my soul. I'm going to have to go to the Nikon website to see if I can find a manual.

ken

[Possum]

Yes that is an excellent camera, you don't need anything higher for web posting. The photo I posted was from my Nikon Coolpix with 1.3 megapixels, that camera was $1,000 back in early 90's.. Nikon's lens quality is superior so the detail even at that low resolution is tremendous. You'll see a knob with various modes, you want the "A" mode which stands for aperture priority. Turn it to that then you should have another adjustment somewhere that you turn and you will the F-stops change in your display. You want a high F-stop for the max depth of field. You'll need to use a tripod and the self timer to avoid motion blur. You don't need anything else, but the Micromark kit would be a good idea for reflective covers....