Two photos with my new Camera

[Stevekir]

I bought a Nikon D3100 Single Lens Reflex camera (it's the bottom of the range model but awesomely sophisticated) and have been experimenting making two kinds of photos of my models (I have completed only 2 so far). I have a simple home-made table-top setup (see photo). The two types of photos are what I call a Presentation image which looks smart, the sort that might appear in a magazine (not that any of mine would!), and a technical one designed to emphasise the detail, quality and mistakes in the model (and the one in this post is a good example!), and as a record mainly for me.

Both are lit directly by a flash because the harsh light, along with its "line of sight" (or whatever it is called) at a small angle to the side of the fuselage, picks up detail well, especially with the larger scale of the technical one.

Remembering the purpose of the photos, could I have comments, critical ones please.

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Here is how I took the photos. I wanted the harshness of a flash for the Spitfire, but wanted a soft shadow rather than the hard-edged one always given by direct flash. So I took two photos without changing anything except the exposure, and the direction of the flash gun. The first had the flash gun pointing at the plane (direct flash). The second had it pointing back towards the umbrella. This had to be done in darkness.

I then used Photoshop. I bought this about 14 years ago when it was quite cheap (it is now £700 if you can get it because it is now offered only via a monthly subscription of about £15 per month!!), but Photoshop Elements (very much cheaper) or Gimp (free) could do what I did.

For the presentation photo, the direct flash image was opened and Photoshop's sharpening filter used to sharpen the image a bit, then the Quick Selection Tool was used to select the image of the plane but not the shadow. Then Edit > Copy. Then the other (umbrella) image was opened in Photoshop (the one with the soft shadow) and following Edit > Paste, the sharpened image of the plane (alone) appeared and was moved to exactly overlap the underlying (unsharpened) image. The result was a sharp image of the plane with a softer shadow. Cropping, then text added and File > Save As….

For the technical photo, the direct flash image (as shot, the one with the hard shadow) was opened again in Photoshop, the plane selected again with the Quick Selection Tool, then quite a lot of sharpening added. Edit > Copy. Then a new blank Photoshop file opened, a new Layer created and Edit > Paste put the plane in. A blue background was then made. (The purpose of the blue background is to create a strong contrast with the plane which I think helps to analyse it.)

It looks complicated when written out but not so much in practice. Standard image processing techniques.

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My flash gun is Chinese: YN560-II (£45 including delivery). Inexpensive, well built and powerful. It works automatically on the camera, or off manually. Two umbrellas, two stands, light socket cost £38 (good value) from Amazon:

Lightfox® KBD007/2grey Aluminium Photo Studio light Set Lamp Camera

I've put a photo post on the wrong place. It's at the end of:

http://www.scale-models.co.uk/threads/please-read-before-posting-in-this-thread.16960/

 

[tecdes]

Hi Steve. You asked for critical ones. Well cannot fault the photos as they are very crisp.

Taking photos are like weathering & distress on models it depends on what you like.

I like, as said before, models to be taken in their environment, clouds behind on a grass or simulated runway plus with a figure or two to give scale. I also make sure that I do not have to much contrast which other wise the subject to me looks very stark & unreal. A rather softer approach one that we see with our own eyes in the real. Human eyes see subjects as quite soft hard objects are hard on the eyes & unreal.

On the text the top line is fine but I would for the bottom line have chosen a sans serif font ( ie without serif the decorative bit at all the end bits of the letter), that is a very simple straight line font. This would give a contrast & also differentiate between the he important & the secondary interest. I would have chosen one of the Swiss fonts, Avant Garde or Ariel.

Laurie

 

[Ian M]

A much easier way to kill the hard shadows under an aircraft is to simply put either a small fill flash or even more simple a sheet of white card to bounce some of the main flash under the wings and weaken the shadow.

Ian M

 

[Polux]

The both photos are very nice Steve.

This is my camera too. A nice one...but never take the time to play with all the settings it has :o

I always use in 'manual' setting, about 400as and the 'objective' quite close...

I haven't Photoshop, so my pics are not retouched.

Will follow this thread if you discover new tips on this camera Steve!!

The other day I found a setting for the greens, blues and red colors...as a one for a nicely stars on the Photos

The photography is very fun!

Polux

 

[tecdes]

Steve as you have Photoshop & depending on what edition it has the availability to process RAW which is an alternative format on your cameras.

RAW gives the ability to manipulate the shot in a very individualistic manner.

Had a look at the specs Steve & it appears that Nikon bundle with the camera software for post processing. I use an Olympus & this came with a similar process software. I have used Photoshop for video work etc & find that the Olympus, although not so sophisticated, is easier & quicker to use. It has most of the tools you would wish for on average & is very easy to use them. If the Nikon one is like the Olympus, which I bet it is ,it will also process RAW. Includes cropping resizing toning, brightness/contrast,colour balance, gamma (great tool), hue/saturation, monochrome, Sharpness/blur, distortion & red eye. Also has a very easy text insert. Also saves in any of the usual file types.

I think this is the one bundled with your camera Steve. http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d3100/features07.htm

Laurie

 

[tanktrack]

I like the blue backed one the spit stands out better and also there is less shine on the fuselage and looks more natural .

steve

 

[Bunkerbarge]

Just a thought Steve, most magazine shots tend to be evenly lit with little shadow. The problem with shadow is that you are hiding detail in there when you might want to see it. Some photographers use a diffuser and some just use a reflective card or sheet. I have always, as much as I possibly can, taken the object outside and used natural light as it is by its very nature much more even. It is usually at its best when not too sunny as, again, you can generate unwanted shadows. I use my old Black and Decker Workmate as a stand and position it according to the sun. You can still use a white card to reflect some more light into a direction you want though so even daylight can be controlled.

As for software I have used Paint Shop Pro now for many years and find it will do far more than I am ever likely to want. Photoshop is really for the professionals and it does more than a lot of them can use as well! Paint Shop Pro is almost as powerful and can be bought for less than 80.00 pounds nowadays or if, like me, you are happy to use a version a couple of versions ago, a lot cheaper than that. It started out as a freebie on the Internet and the first one I got was version four. I think we are now up to fourteen or thereabouts.

You might also want to consider a photo management software to enable you to catalogue your pictures. It won't take you long to generate large numbers and finding a particular picture will become more and more difficult. I have my own labeling system, which uses a date and a description, then I catalogue them using IDImager. This allows me to create folders of specific things and drag thumbnails of my pictures into these folders. Consequently I have folders for Bikes and in there is a folder for my Honda, which is where all the Honda thumbnails are stored. You click on one and it will tell you which original folder on the hard drive your original picture is located.

 

[Stevekir]

Laurie: I have been investigating RAW. I haven't been able to see any difference in my plane pictures, probably because they have a narrow range of dark/light, colour etc. However, I have seen an improvement in two tests that I have done. One is shot from inside towards a glazed door onto a bright sunny scene with bright sky, with the inside wall to one side in deep shadow (a bookcase). The ordinary JPG shows the sky washed out, the bookcase so dark that the books can hardly be seen, and the carpet so light that the texture cannot be seen clearly. The other test, last night, was a tabletop one of a plant in a pot. After adjustment, the whites in the leaves in the RAW version showed whiter and cleaner, and the shadow around the inside of the vase was much lighter and had detail. Here is the result of the first test:

(Edited from "Plane in a pot" to "Plant in a pot"!)



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Someone said that the difference between a scene shot as a JPG and one in RAW is like a cake. The JPG image is like a cake already baked and given to you. You cannot change it much (perhaps put some butter on it). Decisions about ingredients have been made for you (white balance, sharpening, highlights etc, in your list). The RAW is like a set of ingredients. You can choose to leave out the cinnamon and add more raisens and make another version, and do that many times.

That said, I took the photo of my tabletop setup (my original post) with my Sony compact camera and am always very impressed with the results that gives, including the setup photo. It is interesting to note the huge improvements made in so many things over the last 40 years. I saw recently on TV some clips from a TV broadcast in 1960 (B & W of course) and was amazed at the really awful quality.

 

[Stevekir]

Just a thought Steve, most magazine shots tend............

I have made some versions with a soft light and they look more natural. Perhaps I should make my "Presentation" pics like that. The main reason for the harsh light is to record (for me) faults in the surface of the model, caused by poor filling and sanding and lumps of paint and dust and hairs.

Unfortunately, Paint Shop Pro is not made for the Mac, which is why I have continued to use Photoshop. However, with Adobe now offering most of its products in the form of a monthly subscription accessed from the Cloud with a price too high for anyone without customers to pass the cost on to, there will come a time that, with upgrades to Windows and Mac operating systems, the current stand-alone versions will stop working. I will then get a Windows (horror!) emulator and use Paint Shop Pro.

On a photo management system, yes, finding them is and will continue to be a problem. All Macs come with a very good free cataloguer (iPhoto) which suits me so far, but Apple offer Lightroom which does more. IDImager looks interesting.

 

[Vaughan]

Personally Steve I prefer the first shot with the soft shadow the second shot on the blue background makes the Spitfire look like it's floating in the air. I have a Nikon D5100 and for all the faffing about using tripods and lighting I get no better results than just using my iphone4s some artist board and the modelling lights I have. All the photos are taken with my iphone including my finished build shots. Sometimes I use the editing that my mac has when previewing the shots and then I might just tweak the sharpness up a bit. Here's my studio minus the artist board and here's a shot I took recently of my Westland Lysander. It's not perfect by any means but it does the job. By the way your Spitfire looks great.

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[Stevekir]

Vaughan:

Vaughan: Yes, the first shot is nicer. It's the one I would show to friends. And yes, the second looks like its floating, not flying. But that photo is designed to record faults and good things, for me to look at in the future. The blue is not meant to be sky, just a strong contrasting colour to help clarity.

I like the Lysander pic. For me, I would have had a reflector in front and to the right to lighten the port side. Come to think of it, a good shot would be with a light source behind and to the left of a plane, to give highlights to the top etc., and then a reflector as mentioned to light the starboard.

A like the following of a Lanc, with its top light giving highlights but with enough light to see in shadow. Lacking a huge cloudy-bright sky and no wind or rain, I guess that the setup for a model pic would probably need a low white ceiling or a big sheet, with flash or lights bounced off it (plus a reflector in front to the side.) Or perhaps a light tent with a spotlight for the highlights. That's professional stuff, and it would eat into modelling time.

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[Ian M]

The simple way to think of a RAW image is that is the digital equivalent of a film negative. It is a pure record of the image you have captured, and like a film negative all (within reason) the detail is there and it is up to you to bring it out in the processing. Instead of dodging and burning in the printing process, you just do it on a computer and a software package.

Put your camera on a tripod and set up a scene with a good range of dark and light, that doorway shot is a great example. Set the camera to take a Jpeg and take a picture. Then change the settings to save it as a RAW and take another shot. Load both images up in your software and see how much more you can pull out of the RAW image than the jpeg.

Very important; Remember to save any changes as a copy, or you might just loose the original...

Ian M

 

[CDW]

Nice explanation mate ...And Ian, its nice to see someone using JPEG instead of JPG (of which were all guilty of shortening it down to ... Just coz computers could only cope with 3 character filenames)

At the end of the day they're just compressed versions of the good old bitmap .... Which my old Olympus digital camera used to use ... Ahhh thems were the days

 

[Ian M]

I will say one thing. This digital malarkey is a lot easier and cost effective but has removed the fun of the dark room...Also it has made every film camera system unsellable!

If any one wants an OM2 system 35mm film camera with a handfull objectives drop me a line!!

Mr Kir. I hope that you do this little experiment and post your findings.

Ian M

 

[Stevekir]

I will say one thing. This digital malarkey is a lot easier and cost effective but has removed the fun of the dark room...Also it has made every film camera system unsellable!If any one wants an OM2 system 35mm film camera with a handfull objectives drop me a line!!

Mr Kir. I hope that you do this little experiment and post your findings.

Ian M

Yes, I will.