Patrick,
My turn to not get back to a posting - the last couple of weeks have been Really hectic, and...
There's a Tap plastics just up I-5 from you
Where to begin. On shooting Raw, you really should try this. You can then work on that image in ACR in
lightroom, which I think had the CA and defringe adjustments even in the earliest version (I loaded their
pre-release version, but didn't play with it much, so I could be wrong). You can also then take full advantage of the
dynamic range the sensor captured (which means you can adjust things by up to a stop or so - the newest version
of ACR (should you update lightroom) had a "recovery" slider for blown out highlights in which I often
use - LOTS less hassle than having to do an HDR image by processing the raw data several times and feeding
them to an HDR image editor).
White balance isn't that hard - If you want to make a custom one, usually the camera can do it for you by you just shooting something white under the
same lights that you are shooting your items, telling the camera to use that image to determine the white balance,
and then setting the camera to use the "custom white balance". In addition, if you
go to shooting in raw, the white balance is saved, but its just a 'suggestion' - you can change it to whatever you
want/determine is necessary in ACR (they have several presets to get you started). And if you don't even want to
mess with that, what you can do If you are shooting in raw) is just shoot the white or color balanced gray target
under your lighting, use the white balance tool in ACR to measure it, and then use that white balance measurement
on all your images.
The hot spots are a problem - you can use ACR to minimize them, but probably the best way is to try and not
have any. You can usually do this well enough by careful lighting or you might have to go as far as to do an
HDR image so the spectral highlights aren't blown out. (you have to take several images at different
shutter speeds or f/stops or ISOs and combine them) - I used to do this a lot, but I decided I didn't like
the "look" (a lot of people do HDR images for
a surreal look, but even when you are being accurate, they still look a little odd (to me anyway), so I normally
solve this by careful lighting (and the occasional use of the "recover" function) - I seem to have enough
dynamic range to do this now, so...
On the flash, yeah, the built-in flash is pretty much always really bad on shiny round things.
You usually have to diffuse or move the light to where you need it with reflectors or just turn it off.
And actually,a flash in the hot shoe is often not a whole lot better, though its usually lots easier
to diffuse/bounce/redirect the light so you can can consistently get a better image if you do something.
But using a flash as a
light source has a bunch of advantages - its usually LOTS brighter than the ambient light, so you don't have to worry
much about odd light combinations, it effectively becomes the shutter so you don't have to worry so much
about stuff moving while you get your exposure, they don't get hot (I have a box of 1000W starlites I used
to use for swords - never again...), and even the little guys have enough
poop to let you use light modifiers of various sorts. On the downside the little guys usually don't
have a built in modeling light, though I've had pretty good luck just strapping an led headlamp on them
(or setting the headlamp on the flash head's fresnel lens face) to see where the light is going/what its doing).
I HATE most camera's TTL metering for flash - all of them are bad for shooting fittings (their exposure decisions
jump all over the place - the nikon TTL system is the best of the bunch, but it still isn't good for this), which is
why I suggested using the flash manually. The easiest ones to use are the units that have a manual power
setting option - you set up the lighting, set your camera to the desired aperture and shutter speed (which won't
matter much to the flash, but the higher the shutter speed, the less of the ambient light you get), set your camera
so you can see the histogram. What I do is guess at what I need, fire off a shot, and then adjust the
flash power and aperture until I get the exposure I want (to be simple, just look at the histogram until you minimize
the number of pixels that are over or under exposed). If you went really cheap and just found some of those
"one power" flashes, you just treat them like a light and either move them back and forth or use a lighting
modifier to reduce the light as required. If you find something with a thyristor, just make sure it can be
set to total manual control (I'm guessing you could also force these to be full power all the time by taping over
the thyristor window, but I don't really know). I see old Vivitar 283s/285s and old nikon flashes all the time at
the good will for cheap money. The catch is that a lot of these older flashes will fry your camera, so you really
want to run them through something like a wein safe-sync unless you know the flash is "modern camera" safe
(I'm a fan of units like the nikon sb24s because they have a "modern camera safe" voltage and a PC cord connection
on the side (so you don't need to waste even more money on hot shoe adapters,etc. You ought to just email
me if you want to talk more about this option...
First, let me preface this by asking for your forgiveness if the following seems inane or below your usage level
to you - I never know where to begin...
On the way you're using the camera, from your description I believe you have the ISO set to AUTO on your
camera (You basically have 3 knobs to adjust exposure - aperture, shutter speed, and ISO - if you've fixed
the first and are adjusting the second, all the camera can to to get you the correct exposure is play with the third,
which is why you see the grain jump up as you increase the shutter speed). if something's acting odd, just
remember that there's only one combination of these knobs that will give you the correct exposure - for a given
light scenario that is exposed how you want it, if one knob is changed, one or more of the other knobs must be
changed to get "same" exposure. And I suppose you can simplify it further by remembering the special features
of each knob - twiddling aperture adjusts the depth of field (bigger F/stop number, more depth of field
(but less light so you need to decrease shutter speed or increase ISO for correct exposure),
adjusting the shutter speed controls blur when things are time varying, and adjusting the iso
basically causes "grain" (technically sampling accuracy) changes...
There's actually usually a 4th knob, lighting, but I'm ignoring this for the purposes of this diatribe.
What I would suggest is
FIRST getting the camera out of auto iso mode. Set the iso to a level
you can live with (say 100 to start). this is a menu item in the S, A, and M modes on your camera.
Second, FWIW, the "common" usage for shutter priority (S) mode is for shooting moving objects so you can control
the blur. I'd recommend instead working with the aperture priority mode (A on your camera) - this lets you
set the depth of field by controlling the aperture value, and the camera will twiddle the shutter speed (and ISO
if you let it, which I'm recommending you NOT let it do because of the not great high iso performance
of your camera) to make the correct exposure happen.
You might also then want to know about exposure compensation at that point (you will probably find that
you will want to over/under expose the image some - camera's metering systems usually want to get what it
sees as midtones (most of what it thinks is in the image) to be the intensity of 18% gray, which is why you
usually have to tell the camera to over-expose show scenes by a stop or more for example).
You use the EV adjustment button and dial it in as necessary.
You might also find that the camera is doing something weird like adjusting the exposure differently every shot. you
should be able to see from the image where the camera set the f/stop (aperture) and shutter speed info - if this is
jumping around unacceptably, its time to go to the Manual mode (M) on your camera - just take the info from
an image you liked, set these on the camera, and go from there. Or if you are finding that you are having to tell
the camera to over-or under expose a lot its often less trouble to just throw the camera in manual using settings
that have worked in your situation in the past and go from there.
I hope this helps...
Best,
rkg
(Richard George)
Patrick Hastings wrote
Richard I missed this reply until now!
Advice specifically gear to my model camera and all. Thank you. Ok skip the glass...I have not been to a Tap plastics since I lived in the Sacramento, California area... I used to love that store. I still have lexan and acrylic bits I purchased there when it was still cheap.
Anyway much of what you said went over my head, but not all
The color issue is a pain getting those purple tones on the hot spots. I do have an older version of Lightroom. When I get some money in I would like to get that updated. I really like the program. Its my primary photo editor.
I can shoot in raw, but have never tried it. I find the white balance to be a bit confusing. I have been doing trial and error for years to get where I am with the photos. If I suddenly got some help I might have seizure...
The Hot shoe is not something I considered. I was under the impression that a flash would not be desirable based on the flash that is built in. the light coming down directly on the piece seems to blind the camera when the tsuba. have polished finishes. I do not know enough about the settings to use full manual. I use the shutter priority mode and adjust the shutter speed depending on how strong my lights happen to be while positioned to minimize hot spots. The Fstop is automatically set in this mode and is usually hovering around F2. I compensate with the shutter speed to minimize the grain.
patrick
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