BeadMam Handcrafted Jewelry
Welcome to my Musings
Welcome to my Musings
Photography
This entry was posted on 4/26/2006 9:39 PM and is filed under Daily Musings.
Well, its later so time to talk about photography. First let me introduce you to my partner, Pardner. Yes, that is like "Howdy, Pardner" from the old westerns. In fact his full AKC (American Kennel Club) name is Venture Ranch's Howdy Pardner.
He is a chocolate Labrador Retriever, male, chow hound extraodinaire, gentle and loves his toys.
Back to photography. I am talking specifically about taking good pictures of beads and jewelry for eBay, etc. Yes, eventually I want to sell my stuff on the internet. No, I don't expect to get the really big bucks like Pati Walton and others but I am going to try. So first I need to take good, very good pictures. I have a good digital camera. Nikon Coolpix 5700. I have a good photo studio thanks to a great tutorial by Evan at http://www.dawnandevan.com. He calls it the $5 Photo Studio. I already had lights and the cake cover so I bought the bracket to hold the camera and a bolt and wingnut to fasten the camera to the bracket. Here is my version.
It sits on my homemade light box. Here is a picture of a set of beads taken with this setup.
I had to play with the image in Corel PhotoPaint. I haven't got my camera technique down yet. I am taking the pictures with no compression or editing in the camera. That means TIFF and 300 dpi. First I crop the image then I resample to 72 dpi and set the max dimension at 300 pixels. I adjust the levels first then add some brightness and 15% sharpening. I need to study my camera controls so that I do not have to lighten the images so much and I haven't figured out why the original images are not sharp. I use a tripod and self-timer to reduce camera shake. Got to work on that.
These two pictures show the same bracelet with a white background and then a light gray background.
Which one do your prefer? I am tending toward the light gray background.
One last picture.
Back to the camera manual. More on photography later.
He is a chocolate Labrador Retriever, male, chow hound extraodinaire, gentle and loves his toys.
Back to photography. I am talking specifically about taking good pictures of beads and jewelry for eBay, etc. Yes, eventually I want to sell my stuff on the internet. No, I don't expect to get the really big bucks like Pati Walton and others but I am going to try. So first I need to take good, very good pictures. I have a good digital camera. Nikon Coolpix 5700. I have a good photo studio thanks to a great tutorial by Evan at http://www.dawnandevan.com. He calls it the $5 Photo Studio. I already had lights and the cake cover so I bought the bracket to hold the camera and a bolt and wingnut to fasten the camera to the bracket. Here is my version.
It sits on my homemade light box. Here is a picture of a set of beads taken with this setup.
I had to play with the image in Corel PhotoPaint. I haven't got my camera technique down yet. I am taking the pictures with no compression or editing in the camera. That means TIFF and 300 dpi. First I crop the image then I resample to 72 dpi and set the max dimension at 300 pixels. I adjust the levels first then add some brightness and 15% sharpening. I need to study my camera controls so that I do not have to lighten the images so much and I haven't figured out why the original images are not sharp. I use a tripod and self-timer to reduce camera shake. Got to work on that.
These two pictures show the same bracelet with a white background and then a light gray background.
Which one do your prefer? I am tending toward the light gray background.
One last picture.
Back to the camera manual. More on photography later.