Winged Box & Photo issues

[Mike Peace]

Here is a picture of a winged box I made following Bob Hamilton's tutorials on Youtube. http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F5003CDBECC3595B

The body is from a scrap of maple about 7"X2"X1.25". The top is from a scrap of walnut. I finished it with Minwax AO like most of the stuff I turn.

I have been working on my photography using the Phrugal Studio approach. I set a custom white balance and used multiple exposure settings to get the exposure right. Even with the best exposure, I still seem to need to use photo editing software to improve the contrast and color (second picture). For simplicity I use MS Office Picture Manager and click on Auto Correct. This seems to improve the contrast and color. The second picture is after editing. I wish I could skip the photo editing step to increase the contrast.

Any critiques or comments on turning or photography are welcome.




(http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F5003CDBECC3595B)

[Bernie Weishapl]

That is a beauty Mike. Looks mighty fine for a scrap.

[Kyle Iwamoto]

Nice scrap wood!

Didn't understand a word you wrote about the pictures though. I just point and shoot. I get my kids to load the pictures up. Or down, to the computer. On the computer. Whatever.:o

[ROY DICK]

Nailed it on the form and second picture.

Roy

[Neal Addy]

2nd pic looks good to me. Nice lighting. :cool:

[Phil Labowski]

wow very nice. i agree that you nailed it on the second pic

[Steve Schlumpf]

Mike - that is a very nice looking winger box! Real nice contrast between the lid and body!

I am no expert when it comes to photos - but to me - the first photo looks like it is slightly overexposed. By that I mean it looks a little washed out - almost to much light and because of that you lose some of the details such as the underside of the knob on the lid. Just a thought - but maybe set your balance for one stop less exposure and see if that does anything for your photo.

[Richard Madison]

Mike, Nice box. Did you turn it at 3,600 rpm like Bob?

I like the first photo better, but looks a bit overexposed as Steve said. I rarely like the result from "autocorrect" and usually fiddle with brightness and contrast manually, as it were. Assume you know to copy the original and adjust the copy.

[Bob Hamilton]

Looks very good, Mike! I always like maple and walnut together.

Take care
Bob

[Jarrod McGehee]

It's cool how you made the box but I'm not too much a fan of the form. It seems like the lid just doesn't flow as well as it could. I'd try to blend it in a little more. But if I made it, I'd be proud of it also. Good job.

no tips for the photography though. sorry

[alex carey]

The turning looks pretty good. I'd have to agree with Steve, I don't know a lot about pictures but this one does seem to have a little too much light in it, everything surrounding the turning is practically blinding.

[Skip Spaulding]

Very nice job on the "scraps" Mike. The photos arn't bad either!

[Paul Atkins]

I actually like the first photo better. Better contrast and more pop for me. I think the focus is a bit soft and the cropping could be tighter. I like the form.

[Art Kelly]

If you have or can get your hands on a photo editor that allows you to control the levels in the photo via a histogram, you can do a quick and pretty effective fix.

(If you're into history, it's roughly the equivalent of the so-called "zone system" that Weston developed and Ansel Adams used. It took them all day with chemicals and paper. I just did the example below in 10 minutes.)

This is from an older version of Photoshop, but I'm sure there are other editors that will do this for 1/10th the money. (In Photoshop click Image-->Levels and the little dialog box shown below pops up.)

The first photo is right out of the camera. The second photo was adjusted so that the light values in the image are spread out across the usable range of the camera. The third illustration shows the "before" and "after" histograms. It is usually a pretty good improvement, except for those few photos that exactly span the levels available--perfectly exposed.

All I did was move the "sliders" on the histogram in from each end to the point where the first pixel had a non-zero value. (I didn't type in any of the new values in the little dialog windows--just moved the "sliders.")

Note that the original image has to be exposed so that the levels in the photo are within the 0-255 count level. If the image has significant pixels at 0 (black) it's underexposed; if there are pixels at 255 (white) it's overexposed. In either case, this correction won't help.

This technique is explained pretty well in an aftermarket book, "Photoshop Color Correction," by Michael Kieran. It's in the "Levels" chapter.

My $0.02.
Art

[Mike Peace]

Thanks to all for all of the comments and suggestions. Looks like I need to work on cropping and experiment a little more with the exposure settings.

Art, I have Gimp which has the editing features you mentioned and is free. I guess I may have to bite the bullet and learn how to take advantage of the advanced editing features instead of making do with the simplistic auto correction.

[George Morris]

Very very nice ! I guess I should try that soon. Photos look good also ! Thanks for sharing! G

[Steve Schlumpf]

Mike - a few days ago Neal Addy had a photo tutorial thread and part of that was how to adjust curves using GIMP. You may want to check it out as he sure makes things easy to understand! http://www.sawmillcreek.org/showthread.php?t=100827

[Art Kelly]

Note that the original image has to be exposed so that the levels in the photo are within the 0-255 count level.

I should add that if your camera has the ability to display the histogram as you take the photo, you should use this feature to adjust the exposure so that all the values are within the 0-255 count "window." This gives you wiggle room for your post-production adjustments.

Maybe it's $0.03:)