Need help taking phtos of small objects!

joeinmiami

Hello there!

I have been asked to help set up a website of a distributor, my part is to take photos of all the items they carry so they can be put into the web site. I have three problems:

1 - For this purpose I purchased a small kit of a soft light box; this kit came with 2 halogen lights. The box comes with a white and blue background cloth. I am to use the white color. How do I set the white balance so the white comes out white? I have try the different white balance settings and the closer I get with these lights is the sun setting, but this setting leaves a small bluish tint.

2 - I am not sure how much I should charge for this work, we expect to take a large amount of photos, maybe more than a thousand. Any suggestions?

3 - While doing test shutting and downloading the photos to my PC I noticed that the entire part, lest say a small screwdriver, is not in focus, the center may be in focus but the ends are soft. I have tried 2 different lens; my Nikon 18-200mm and my Nikon 50mm. I am letting the lens auto focus, and I am very close to the part when taking the photo. What I am doing wrong?

Any help given will be greatly appreciate.

Thanks

Joe :scratch

angevin1

joeinmiami wrote:

Hello there!

I have been asked to help set up a website of a distributor, my part is to take photos of all the items they carry so they can be put into the web site. I have three problems:

1 - For this purpose I purchased a small kit of a soft light box; this kit came with 2 halogen lights. The box comes with a white and blue background cloth. I am to use the white color. How do I set the white balance so the white comes out white? I have try the different white balance settings and the closer I get with these lights is the sun setting, but this setting leaves a small bluish tint.

2 - I am not sure how much I should charge for this work, we expect to take a large amount of photos, maybe more than a thousand. Any suggestions?

3 - While doing test shutting and downloading the photos to my PC I noticed that the entire part, lest say a small screwdriver, is not in focus, the center may be in focus but the ends are soft. I have tried 2 different lens; my Nikon 18-200mm and my Nikon 50mm. I am letting the lens auto focus, and I am very close to the part when taking the photo. What I am doing wrong?

Any help given will be greatly appreciate.

Thanks

Joe

1. White Balance. What kind of post production software are you using? There are many. Plenty of free ones will let you adjust the WB. TO adjust it in camera, adjust it in Kelvin to taste. Hope you are shooting Raw till you get this gig rolling.

2. You need to charge for the work and license the photos. I used this calc recently.

3. You answered your own question: You are too close to the items. The DOF or depth of field requires you to change something. A lot of folks like this.

Good Luck

joeinmiami

Thank you angevin1 for your prompt reply!

1- I will play with the white balance setting to match the halogen lights; due to the large amount of photos expected and to the fact that all these photos are destine to be in a web site, I would prefer to set my camera and/or the lights so I do not have to do any post processing. I have been playing with my sb600 flash unit using it as a slave flash getting some decent results, but I am afraid that I may need a second flash unit to get rid of the shadows.

2 - The link you send, even do it doesn't have a setting for web development, is a very good guide that I intend to use, Thanks for it.

3 - Since the parts in question are small in size, between 3 to 10 inches across, forces me to get close so I can fill up the frame of the photo. I will keep practicing until I can get a distance that will give me what I need.

Again, thank you sir, you have been very helpful.

Joe

Art Scott

joeinmiami wrote:

3 - Since the parts in question are small in size, between 3 to 10 inches across, forces me to get close so I can fill up the frame of the photo. I will keep practicing until I can get a distance that will give me what I need.

Again, thank you sir, you have been very helpful.

Joe

How are you "posing" your subject??
Easiest is to just post a photo to see ............

For a screwdriver that need to be almpost but not quite perpindicular but a very slight angle to the camera and lens.....

Almost sounded as if the screwdriver was being shot end to end whcih would require massive amounts of DOF............

ziggy53

I moved this to the Technique forum because this will involve some equipment but a whole lot of technique.

Joe, you need to get a detailed description of exactly what is expected from you before you quote a job like this. You need to know whether the job requires clipping paths or alpha channel masks, commonly required for catalog and promotional materials.

You need the requester to provide some visible examples of their expectations from you and you need to demonstrate that capability before taking on the responsibility.

Get everything in writing before you quote or you could literally tie up months of work for little gain.

time2smile

#3 if DOF is an issue you may need to look at the Macro forum for stacking...that would solve the DOF issue..

good luck

pathfinder

I doubt that stacking for a 1000 images is what the OP really wants to do. It doesn't sound like he is going to be paid for that level of work either.

I would suggest stopping down your aperture as much as possible ( being aware that apertures smaller than f11-116 can degrade the image somewhat.) Smaller apertures will make the DOF much larger.

A longer focal length lens, like a 90mm macro or even a 90mm T&S will help some since you do not have to be so close to the subject. As the subject gets closer to the lens, the DOF falls off very rapidly. Tilting the T&S lens is the studio technique usually used for great DOF with a near object.

Why don't you post a few pictures so we can see what you are attempting to do?

Zerodog

I do some shots of products and custom fixtures that we make at my real job. I have been experimenting with different lighting ideas and this is what I have come up with that seems to work very well for what we are doing. Some items are bigger, 2'x2', and some are smallish around 6" long.

We have a big white paper background on a table to pull down. I use 3 flashes, and usually my tripod. 1 flash on each side of the product on the table bouncing off the ceiling and sort of pointing back to the backdrop. And one SB600 on the camera with a Lumiquest big bounce defuser. The SB600 also triggers the other 2 flashes. This setup evenly lights the product and minimizes shadows. It also blows out the background enough to make it go away. I use custom white balance and set it with a gray card. The WB helps more than you think. I also shoot RAW so the editing is easier for WB and exposure tweaking to. I usually just process 1 photo to my liking then paste the settings to the entire set in Lightroom. This makes PP quick and painless.

Here is an example. Hopefully this gives you some ideas. This thing is about 8" long. This was shot with my 20mm prime, 1/60, f14 ISO 500 The only PP was adusting WB a bit, tweaking the exposure and brightness/contrast.


Here is an example of the WB setup.

GC5

You are in a controlled environment so you should be able to stop down considerably. You should also be able to set a custom WB and forget about it.

If the items are very small, try a macro lens.