Photography for woodworkers

[Rob Millard]

I made a short web article on photography for woodworkers, which can be viewed at the following link.

http://home.woh.rr.com/federalfurniture/index.html
Rob Millard

[John Keeton]

Nice article! Photography would make a nice companion hobby to woodworking, for lots of reasons. But, I don't think I can deal with another obsessive hobby that cries out for every spare dollar I have! You did a great job putting a lot into a relatively short piece. This will be very helpful to those that want to do a much improved photo portfolio for marketing their craft.

[Rich Schneider]

Great article! I have just started gathering together equipment and backgrounds to photograph my projects as well. Another good/companion source of info is www.elmorephoto.com/Wood/PhotoWood.pdf (http://www.elmorephoto.com/Wood/PhotoWood.pdf). It is a pdf of a PowerPoint. When I was first looking for info specific to woodworkign photography it was the first thing I had found and it was useful too, but not as detailed in the explanations. Thanks for putting together this article because I suspect there are a lot of woodworkers who wish they understood more about improving their photography skills. I've seen a lot of poor photos online of otherwise high-quality, innovative wood projects.

[Mark Valsi]

Thanks !!!

[Jim Becker]

Thanks, Rob!!

[Eric DeSilva]

Nice article. One thing I'd add as a requirement--esp. if people are using slow shutter speeds is a decent tripod. You noted the mirror slap with long exposures, but I don't see how that would be different for long v. short exposures. What you may be seeing is the bounce from depressing the shutter button. I do a fair bit of night shooting -- 15-30s exposures--and one trick I've used for crisp exposures is to either use a remote shutter cable release, an electronic remote, or set the timer to trigger the shutter. For long exposures, you might also see if your dSLR has a "long exposure noise reduction" setting. Also turn off your auto-ISO setting--the camera may try to adjust the effective ISO of the CCD, which will result in much more noisy pictures.

I liked your backdrop. One thing I saw a while back--I think on instructables.com--was a set up a guy used in his garage for shooting bikes. He had the backdrop rolled up on a bar and out of the way, but he could roll it down like a blind when he wanted to shoot. If you shoot a lot of furniture, might be something to consider.

One final point... If you are shooting small objects, like boxes, look into a softbox. Essentially, the idea is to put the object into a box where the side panels act like diffusers. You don't get glare that way and see much more even lighting. Most commercial product shoots (even for large objects) use a flash inside a giant softbox that can be aimed at the object. I actually use a 36" x 40" softbox over a flash unit when shooting portraits--avoids having a light point source for reflections.

[Neil Lamens]

That's a very good article. If you've been at this awhile, much of what you've built is on slides and polaroids and just don't scan and look right. It had to take a special piece to bring in the photographer or go to him with the piece. Costly in the day.

Your article is perfect. There's no excuses, we all should be shooting our pieces today!!!!

[Rob Millard]

[quote=Eric DeSilva;766152]Nice article. One thing I'd add as a requirement--esp. if people are using slow shutter speeds is a decent tripod. You noted the mirror slap with long exposures, but I don't see how that would be different for long v. short exposures. What you may be seeing is the bounce from depressing the shutter button.


I did mention the need for a good tripod.
On the issue of mirror slap, the source I see is not from depressing the shutter, since I use the remote or a timer for all the shots I take, other than the ones used to evaluate exposure. I get blurring with a certain range of shutter speeds, which is caused by the vibration of the mirror moving out of the way. On the camera/lens I’m using now, that range is quite narrow. With a one second shutter speed there is nearly always some blurring, but at 1.3 seconds and slower there is none (I avoid shutter speeds over 2 seconds because even with the noise reduction feature, I see more noise than I’d like). The other camera I had didn’t seem to like a speed of 1.6 seconds, but it didn’t affect each shot, being more like one in three. That camera didn’t have mirror lock, in the classic sense but it did have a feature where the exposure was delayed a bit so the vibration had ceased. The camera I’m using now doesn’t have any mechanism for locking the mirror or delaying the shutter, so I have to watch the speed.
If I had the room, I’d make some kind of soft box
Rob Millard

[Eric DeSilva]

I did mention the need for a good tripod.D'oh--I'm sorry I was thinking of the sidebar "essentials," but now realize that was camera features. I'm a beeeg advocate of tripods.


On the issue of mirror slap, the source I see is not from depressing the shutter, since I use the remote or a timer for all the shots I take, other than the ones used to evaluate exposure. I get blurring with a certain range of shutter speeds, which is caused by the vibration of the mirror moving out of the way.
Interesting. I've never run into it as an issue, but I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what I shoot that is in that kind of shutter speed range. I think I tend to the long 15-30 sec exposures, daylight, or I'm hauling out the strobes and the softbox. I'll have to experiment some... But, I'm still puzzled. The mirror has to flip up regardless of your shutter speed. If its a short exposure, you would think the effect would be magnified. Maybe it has to do with harmonics or something.

[Rick Levine]

Nice article! Photography would make a nice companion hobby to woodworking, for lots of reasons. But, I don't think I can deal with another obsessive hobby that cries out for every spare dollar I have! You did a great job putting a lot into a relatively short piece. This will be very helpful to those that want to do a much improved photo portfolio for marketing their craft.

Too late. Been there, done that! Bought my photo gear years before I bought my woodworking equipment though. I actually have more invested in photo equipment than tools and that is saying alot.

[Tom Maple]

D'oh--I'm sorry I was thinking of the sidebar "essentials," but now realize that was camera features. I'm a beeeg advocate of tripods.


Interesting. I've never run into it as an issue, but I'm racking my brain trying to figure out what I shoot that is in that kind of shutter speed range. I think I tend to the long 15-30 sec exposures, daylight, or I'm hauling out the strobes and the softbox. I'll have to experiment some... But, I'm still puzzled. The mirror has to flip up regardless of your shutter speed. If its a short exposure, you would think the effect would be magnified. Maybe it has to do with harmonics or something.


A faster shutter speed will minimize the effects of mirror slap just as it reduces movement when shooting fast action. The shutter is opened and closed so fast that the motion is not noticeable. Remember that a focal plane shutter is not fully open at any speed above X-synch. There is just a slit that travels across the film plane at higher speeds.
The longer shutter speeds you use at night negate the effect of the mirror slap because the vibration from the mirror has ended after one second (not an exact time, it's probably less) and is a small percentage of the total exposure time.

[Greg Funk]

But, I'm still puzzled. The mirror has to flip up regardless of your shutter speed. If its a short exposure, you would think the effect would be magnified. Maybe it has to do with harmonics or something.

I suspect the effects of 'mirror slap' are a function of the mass of the mirror and camera and are not uniform from one camera to another. If your exposure time is approximately the same as the duration of the vibration caused by the mirror you will have the most pronounced effects. If your exposure is significantly shorter or longer the effects will be less noticeable. In the case of very short exposures it doesn't matter much what the mirror is doing (or how steady you hold the camera) since the shutter isn't open very long. On very long exposures the small vibration caused by the mirror slap isn't long enough relative to the overall eposure to have an effect.

Greg

Edit: Sorry Tom I didn't see your explanation. I guess I am too slow at typing.

[Eric DeSilva]

I dug up a reasonably good explanation here: http://www.photozone.de/slr-vs-rangefinder

Maybe there was an subconscious reason I was avoiding anything but very fast or very slow shutter speeds...

[Glenn Clabo]

Rob,
Thank you. My "other" hobby is photography...and for some reason I really don't try to connect the two. This really brings it all home.

[Don Bullock]

Great article.

SWMBO will be very thankful to you. Now, I not only have all my woodworking tools to buy, then all the camera and photography equipment plus all my computer hardware and software to process the photographs --- she's going to kill me for sure.;):rolleyes::D

Thanks for sharing.

[Will Blick]

A nice general description Rob... a few comments that might be helpful.....

> A lens will usually performs best at the mid point of its f stop range. I usually don't go over f 11, and it is better to stay under f 8.


Putting aside subject motion and camera motion, lenses perform best at the f stop they were optimized for. This varies based on the lens, but as a "general rule", its usually between 2 - 4 stops slower than the fastest stop. This is for SLR's, not digicams or Large Format lenses. If you can find a lenses MTF curves, it will chart the lens performance at each f stop, or at least a few. Also, lenses are designed for a specific focus distances..... if you shoot objects that are very close, an ideal lens will be a close-up, portrait, or a mild macro lens (max. 1:1). The wider angle the lens, obviously the closer you will be to the subject, so often close ups on furniture will benefit from these close focus lenses.



> A balance must be struck between an f stop small enough to give a sufficient depth of field but not one that induces diffraction.


This is true, but due the Modular Transfer Functions of a combined system, (lens and recording media) diffraction is a very gradual degradation that occurs from the fastest f stop, to the slowest. There is no "diffraction point" whereas image quality is degraded, its a continual, gradual process each time you stop down. However, as you correctly point out, its more important to obtain the required DOF, and the resultant diffraction is a by product you must live with. For small sensor SLR's, this is rarely an issue as the lenses have very short fl's, which by default makes the lenses fast. (low f stops) Diffraction occurs over the entire image area, not a reduction of sharpness at the edges. All lenses are sharpest in their center..... it's the nature of optics...


There is also many options available in digital processing software, such as focus stacking, whereas you can combine several shots, of different focus distances, into one perfectly focused image....but for small enlargements, this is overkill.... but for huge DOF images, this is a very viable option....


As for lighting.... with good image processing software, such as PS CS3, (it could be in PS elements also?) with min. skills, you can compensate for uneven lighting with the highlight / shadow sliders....so the perfect lighting set-ups are not mandatory... assuming you have the software...



As for mirror slap....YEP.... but, there is ways you can work around this.... first, obviously if your camera has a mirror lock-up setting, (usually in the Custom Function settings) USE IT. Tripods of course, should be mandatory for still subjects. If you do not have mirror lock-up, try using an exposure of a few seconds by keeping the ISO as low as possible, keeping flash very low, and adding as many Neutral Density filters as required for a 1 second exposure. Set the camera in manual mode for a 3 second exposure...... Then, put a black cloth over the lens, fire the shutter, let the mirror slap vibration dampen for a second, then move the cloth away from the lens, fire flashes if you need to, put cloth back over lens, shutter will close after at 3 seconds. This sounds more complicated than it really is. This trick has been used for as long as shutters were developed, to rid the vibrations caused by mirror slap, and sometimes the shutters themselves. Some of what i described may require a little more than beginner skills.


The key is though, you only need the shot to meet your criteria....and if the criteria is web display, often what I described can be over-kill, as the monitor at 72 dpi is the limiting factor. Of course, there is lots of variables here, and I am trying not to turn this into a photo tutorial....

[John Stevens]

Rob, thank you very much for sharing your hard-earned info here.

Regards,

John

[Bill Huber]

Most of the newer DSLR have a mirror lock up on them. I have an Olympus E3 and I can set the time the mirror is up until it take the shot. If I set it for 1 sec then the mirror goes up and then 1 sec. later the shutter goes off.

If you do not have mirror lockup on your camera and are using a flash you can use Slow Sync and this will help with the problem.