NE Walnut Bowl

[Scott Hackler]

Here is a bowl that I made a while back but never got around to taking a picture and posting it. I spent a little time tonight using my new photo tent and RETAKING pictures of all my recent work. So I thought I might as well share this one. Still working out the bugs involved with decent pictures, so lets hear photo criqtiques as well.

Walnut NE, 6" dia x 4 1/2". BLO and Lacquer.

Comments and such welcome. Thanks.

198633

[charlie knighton]

very nice, photo's good also

[Andrew Arndts]

Look very nice. If I were to be critical, it is just a bit dark in the front being in a photo tent. But that is just me. I am a wood turner, not a photographer. I have a friend that will assist in that task if I think it is valid enough.

[Tim Thiebaut]

Great looking bowl Scott, looks like you got that down pretty thin to! Nice looking piece of wood as well, I like the color contrast around the rim area.

[John Keeton]

Great work on the bowl, Scott. For me, the pic is cropped a little close - tough to get that exactly right without having too much "air" around the turning. And, the front lighting is a little low, as noted. I struggle with the lighting issue, and have quit using added lights in favor of extended shutter time. It seems to give me better pics, but I still have some experimentation to do. In a perfect world, we would have all of those "bounce boards" and diffusers sitting around, with multiple flash setups that are programmable for effect - hard to get within the budget range most of us want to be for our pics!!!

[Baxter Smith]

Nice bowl with a neat edge Scott. Agree with John on the cropping and the need for a little more light in front. More light from one side or the other as well seems to give more depth. When I set my tent up it is at right angles to the the south facing garage door windows which provides a little stonger light from one side. With a tripod and timed exposure I can get decent results but its not a great setup because it is dependant on the time of day and the sun going in and out of the clouds.

[bob svoboda]

Very nice NE bowl, Scott. I have seen a lot worse pic's, too.

[Scott Hackler]

Thanks for the comments. Right now I have 3 100w 5600k CFL's shining onto the tent. One from each side and one down from above. What I find strange is that even though I set the white balance to 5600k and I still have to adjust the color temp in Paint Shop Pro (set to 5600k). Wierd, huh? I think I have enough physical light, but have been playing around with shutter speeds. For those interested and for possible help, my settings (pre correction in the PSP program) were: F22, ISO 400, WB 5600, exposure speed .5 second. Idealy it sure would be nice to only have to crop the pictures in the program, but I don't know how that is going to be possible after several hours of experimenting.

[Nate Davey]

Scott, for what it's worth, I don't use any lights with my pics, just the light coming in from the window. I run my shutter speed down until it looks right. Most of mine are shot with a shutter speed of 1/2 sec or there abouts. If I don't have the light outside I leave the shutter open longer. The mesquite HF I just shot was done at F2.6, shutter speed 1/13, ISO 64 and as I'm using no lights, so no WB correction. If it looks a little off I "remove color cast" with Adobe, but that's about it. This is how it looks straight off the camera and my "photo booth". Hope this is helpful.

P.S. I'm shooting in manual, so the camera doesn't get to vote.

198640

[Tim Rinehart]

Really nice form Scott...kinda reminds me of half an egg shell, and the thinness supports that! I wish I could comment on photo stuff...still learning myself.

[John Keeton]

Scott, I shoot my pics in manual mode, as well, and will often "bracket" them with varying aperature settings and/or shutter speeds. Then, when I get them on the computer, I can tweak the balance.

[Prashun Patel]

I love that shape and the edge. Looks like a hatched walnut 'egg'. Delicate all the way round.

[Scott Hackler]

I am also in full manual mode. I think this is just a process of tweeking to the individual set up. I do know that the latest round of pictures are a LOT better than anything I have done prior, BUT I am trying to make the most out of this expensive Canon T2i I bought. It is a very interesting medium and I would guess something that I will be "tweeking" for a while.

One thing that I found very helpfull was to leave the turning in place and take 10-15 different pictures using all kinds of different settings. Then I open all of them in Paint Shop Pro to compare. Once the "best of the bunch" were picked, I would look at the image properties and see what the particular settings were for that picture! Then I have been adjusting the settings around and very close to those settings to refine things.

I still have a lot to learn, but I wanted to share some of my experiences to help my fellow novice photographers. :)

[Ted Calver]

I'm going through the same process with light experimenting. Being camera illiterate compounds the problem. Just when I think the lighting is right the depth of field is out of whack ....the front will be in focus and the back will be blurry. It's a little hard to tell on your picture Scott, but it almost seems that the back of the bowl is in focus and the front is a little blurry. It seems that depth of field is also a function of aperture setting. I'd love for someone knowledgeable to offer some manual settings to start with...or is that camera and lens specific?

[Scott Hackler]

Ted, it is my understanding that the F stop should be set as high as possible for an even focus across the entire piece. But the downside is that the higher the F number the smaller the hole in the lens and the lower the amount of light entering the sensor. One thing that I have been doing it to let the camera auto focus, but manual everything else. Even with the LCD display on, I can't be 100% its in focus, with manual focusing. That small screen isn't the same as my 19" computer monitor!! Now in auto focus my camera has a little box that you can move around for the "focus point". I try to put this dead center on the part of the piece that is closest to the camera.

A couple other things I have learned. lower ISO number = better detail and less noise, white balance should be set to match the light source (as close as possible), high F stop for even focus, adjust shutter speed to adjust for the light level (so your picture is not to light or to dark). Afterwards I still have to use a photo editor to crop, adjust color temp (to 5600k) and remove color cast and sometimes use contrast and saturation adjustments. My ultimate goal it to get the picture as close to real life as possible (but I think that is everyones goal). I am not 100% happy with what I am producing right now, but for me I think I am at 80% satisfaction. Still a ton to learn.

Hope that helps a bit Ted.

[David E Keller]

Pretty bowl, Scott... I don't know nothing about picture making, so I'll leave that to the others.

[Curt Fuller]

I don't know much about picture taking either. But I really like the bowl. I like the refined, smooth curve at the bottom and how it gradually deteriorates to the natural edge. Very nice looking bowl!

[Scott Hackler]

Thanks for the comments.

[Bernie Weishapl]

Scott that is a great looking bowl. I do like the form and wood. Gotta love walnut.