Photographing weapons - the details

[Jens Nordlunde]

Thank you very much David, for your comments, and for your promise to guide members of the forum. An answer like this is what I had hoped for.
You are, of course right, that the whole weapon shall be shown as well, although, according to the length of the blade it may be rather small.
One thing, which may help when photographing is, an old umbrella sprayed white at the inside. When strong light is pointed into the umbrella, it is, due to the rounded surface, spread in a nice way, and often avoids shadows.

[Jens Nordlunde]

BTW the background was in fact light blue, but I had the picture over PhotoShop. I showed this picture as it is not without faults, and others may be able to do the same.
I really like your pictures

[Jens Nordlunde]

David, please comment on the quality of the picture - I mean the pixels and the RAW format. I think this may confuse some.

[David]

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

David, please comment on the quality of the picture - I mean the pixels and the RAW format. I think this may confuse some.

Well, this might just confuse matters more.
The pixel count of your camera is an important factor, but it must be remembered that it is relative to the size of your sensor. Therefore you might find that a 6mp SLR camera with a larger sensor might well out perform a 10mp point-and-shoot with a much small sensor because they have to make the pixels so much small to fit them into the smaller sensor, thereby diminishing their resolving power. Most consumer and prosumer digital SLRs are clocking in at around 10-12mp which will provide far more resolving power then is needed in most situations.
As a photojournalist i rarely use raw file shooting because it just isn't practical. Ideally it is the "best" way to shoot because it preserves all you data in an uncompressed form, but it also requires far more post-production work and file conversions to upload unto the internet. I think it is a great thing in some contexts, but for our purposes it might be easier to stick to shooting in jpegs.

[Jens Nordlunde]

David, thank you very much for your explanation.
I hope this will be followed up with questions.
Jens

[aerosick]

6. Below are some examples of a hilt i shot recently.

David,

1. Where do you store your photos?

2. How did you Post the 4 photos side by side so they are small enough that the viewer does not have to Scroll?

I use Photo Bucket and my photos take up most of the screen.

Billy

[David]

Originally Posted by aerosick

David,

1. Where do you store your photos?

2. How did you Post the 4 photos side by side so they are small enough that the viewer does not have to Scroll?

I use Photo Bucket and my photos take up most of the screen.

Billy

1. Well these particular photos are presently on my desktop in a file marked WebButaHilts. These are images i have already resized for web use. The original files are still on my desktop as well as burned onto a CD. I might eventually burn these web size images off to a disc too. Some people like to use external hard drives for storage. I would recommend that you always have a back-up somewhere as hard drives can and do fail at times.
2. I am a little confused by your question. On my laptop these photos are not side-by-side, they are stacked on top of one another and there is no need to scroll side-to-side to see them. If your photos take up most of the screen they probably need to be resized. The photos i posted here were sized to approximately 6x9 inches at a resolution of 72 dpi (dots per inch). Most computer screens can not read anything higher than 72 dpi so while you would need something higher to make prints it's wasted file space for on-line use. If i changed the dimensions of these photos and made them much smaller they might fit side-by-side, but would be too small to be of much good. If you are seeing my photos side-by-side and need to scroll right and left to view them i am not sure why that is or how to fix it.
BTW, i cannot emphasize more that for the sake of future archives it is important that you do not just link us to photo bucket or some other server to see your photos. UPLOAD YOUR PHOTOS TO THIS SITE. The reasoning is that eventual your photo will no doubt be removed from photo bucket and then there will just be a blank space in the archived thread when people do research. Comments will become meaningless without your example to refer to. So everyone should make sure to upload their photos to this site so that they will always be here for study.

[migueldiaz]

Jens, David, many thanks for bringing up this topic!

Originally Posted by aerosick

2. How did you Post the 4 photos side by side so they are small enough that the viewer does not have to Scroll?

Billy, as far as I know the pics go side by side or on top of each other depending on the size of your web browser 'window' at the moment.

Pls. see the result of a little experiment I did:

[David]

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

BTW the background was in fact light blue, but I had the picture over PhotoShop. I showed this picture as it is not without faults, and others may be able to do the same.
I really like your pictures

I see. I also noticed a bit od a yellow cast on the close-ups. Don't know if this is from an incandescent light source or not.
Yes, showing our pictures warts and all can be very helpful. Not much to say about a perfect photo, but if people post imperfect ones we might be able to advise as to how to make them better.
Over photoshopping can also be a problem. It seems some folks really like to over-sharpen for instance. And once you start messing too much with color balance, saturation, levels and all you can end up with a pretty artificial representation of your subject. Moderation in photoshop is always a good guide.

[David]

Originally Posted by Jens Nordlunde

One thing, which may help when photographing is, an old umbrella sprayed white at the inside. When strong light is pointed into the umbrella, it is, due to the rounded surface, spread in a nice way, and often avoids shadows.

This is a great idea and probably a lot cheaper than buying a real photo studio umbrella.