Still working on the light tent. Three bowls for your consideration.

[Toney Robertson]

This photo thing is a LOT harder than it appears. Good grief, it should not be this hard to take a picture of an inanimate object.

Bowl #'s 4 8 and 10.

Spalted maple, wipe on poly, 7 1/2 x 3 1/2, 3/16" wall thickness.

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj101/iublue/0-4.jpg

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj101/iublue/0-4A.jpg

East Indian Rosewood, 7 1/2 x 2, 1/4" wall thickness, Danish oil and Beall buffed.

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj101/iublue/0-8.jpg

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj101/iublue/0-8A.jpg

Canary wood, 7 1/2 x 1 3/4, 1/8" wall thickness, Antique oil finish.

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj101/iublue/0-10.jpg

http://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj101/iublue/0-10A.jpg

Comments welcomed about either the pictures or the bowls.

If it would be better for people to have thumbnails instead of full blown pictures, I would appreciate it if someone could tell me how to do it.

Thanks,

Toney
http://www.sawmillcreek.org/%5BIMG%5Dhttp://i270.photobucket.com/albums/jj101/iublue/0-4.jpg%5B/IMG%5D

[Steve Schlumpf]

Toney - I like all of these bowls! Nice variety of forms and woods!

I understand your frustration with the photos - in many ways they are a lot harder to do than the turning we try to that a photo of. Big thing for me is the use of a tripod, the macro setting for focus, daylight florescent bulbs for lighting and the self-timer to help eliminate vibration when taking the photo.

If you want to use the thumb nails - there is a short 'how to' in the Tech Support Forum that walks you through the process of posting.

Only other thing about photos - take lots of them and vary the light, the focus, the shutter speed, etc until you come up with what works for you and your setup. Its a lot like turning in that it gets easier with doing.

Looking forward to seeing some more of your turnings! These bowls were very nice!

[David Foshee]

very nice I also like the various forms.

[Richard Madison]

Toney,
Very nice work! The last picture of the square canary wood piece is very good. And some good advice from Steve.

One thing you might try- Before adjusting the file size to fit this forum, adjust the picture size to fit within 640 x 480 pixel size. Then check the file size and reduce if needed. Works for me, but that's no guarantee.

[Jason Roehl]

Toney, nice bowls. As for the photography thing, I'm just a hack myself, but I have learned a few things over the years--some from being taught by good photographers, some from watching pros, and some from experience. One thing I put together from watching the pros is this: to get that one-in-a-million photograph--you have to take a million photos. Digital cameras make that even easier (and cheaper!) If you ever watch a pro photographer, they are constantly snapping photos and changing settings. Along with that, it's important to review what you've taken. It helps if you know what your settings were for each photo (often recorded with the photo on digital cameras), so you can get a feel for what works in which situation.

[Daniel Heine]

Toney,

Photos look fantastic!!! Did you do a white balance on these pictures? nVery nice turnings as well!!!

Dan

[Bernie Weishapl]

Toney those are some great looking bowls and the pictures look great.

[curtis rosche]

those are very very nice, did you have any issues with the canary wood trying to chiip off that edge?

[Toney Robertson]

Toney,

Photos look fantastic!!! Did you do a white balance on these pictures? nVery nice turnings as well!!!

Dan

Thanks but I still don't like the way the photos look. I just wish that I could take photographs that look like the object when viewed with your own eyes.

I did a manual white balance at the beginning of the photo session. I took a plain white piece of paper to set the WB.

Toney

[Toney Robertson]

those are very very nice, did you have any issues with the canary wood trying to chiip off that edge?

Curtis,

No, I really had no issues with chipping. Maybe I was lucky. :)

Toney

[Jim Underwood]

I'm just echoing what others have said.

Definitely set the camera on Macro for this close photo work. That will help the focus problem. A timer and tripod will finish it off.

Another trick I learned with the autofocus is to press the button halfway down to get the focus boundary box lit up, then if the camera hasn't focused on the area I want, move it in or out til the area I want focused is sharp, and then snap the picture. Sometimes that's the only way to get it.

Take lots of pictures with the same light box setup, and vary your light settings on your camera until you get the right exposure and white balance.
White balance: Make sure you don't mix two different light types (florescent/incandescent) or your manual white balance won't work correctly. I didn't realize this and had no end of troubles. The blue tint on your background tells me you don't quite have something right on that white balance. Keep playing with it until your white background is white, and not yellow or blue. I finally built a light box from foam board and used a 500W halogen bulb inside the box to reflect light. The foam board keeps the other lights (I had a florescent/incandescent/metal halide light mixture) from interfering with the white balance. Now it's really close to being neutral in color right out of the camera using a manual white balance.
Exposure:
I've finally optimized my exposure at +2/3. If I drop to +1/3 or jump up to +1 then it's just not right for the 500W Halogen bulb. Play with it until you don't have to adjust the brightness and contrast with Irfanview (free photo editing software) or Photoshop ($$).

As stated, after getting the best photo out of the camera that you can, adjust the exposure and color balance (as well as crop/rotate/resize etc) with one of the photo editing softwares.

The only other thing I might tell you is to pull out just a little bit so that you frame the piece a little more. A mistake I made a lot was to get zoomed in too much.

Oh, and also, you could use a little reflector (foil covered foam board or the like) to reflect some of the light up under the pieces so the detail shows up there too.

Hope this helps.

Oh, and nice turnings by the way. I like what you've done. I think the first one might could use some detail on the foot. But the rest of them look nice with pure form, and good finishes.

[Richard Madison]

Toney,
Was looking at the pictures and not the bowls. The spalted maple is beautiful. If you had made the bottom portion straight, it would have sucked (to coin a phrase), but the flare at the bottom is just right.

Also, use software to sharpen and reduce brightness.

[Toney Robertson]

I'm just echoing what others have said.

Definitely set the camera on Macro for this close photo work. That will help the focus problem. A timer and tripod will finish it off.

Another trick I learned with the autofocus is to press the button halfway down to get the focus boundary box lit up, then if the camera hasn't focused on the area I want, move it in or out til the area I want focused is sharp, and then snap the picture. Sometimes that's the only way to get it.

Take lots of pictures with the same light box setup, and vary your light settings on your camera until you get the right exposure and white balance.
White balance: Make sure you don't mix two different light types (florescent/incandescent) or your manual white balance won't work correctly. I didn't realize this and had no end of troubles. The blue tint on your background tells me you don't quite have something right on that white balance. Keep playing with it until your white background is white, and not yellow or blue. I finally built a light box from foam board and used a 500W halogen bulb inside the box to reflect light. The foam board keeps the other lights (I had a florescent/incandescent/metal halide light mixture) from interfering with the white balance. Now it's really close to being neutral in color right out of the camera using a manual white balance.
Exposure:
I've finally optimized my exposure at +2/3. If I drop to +1/3 or jump up to +1 then it's just not right for the 500W Halogen bulb. Play with it until you don't have to adjust the brightness and contrast with Irfanview (free photo editing software) or Photoshop ($$).

As stated, after getting the best photo out of the camera that you can, adjust the exposure and color balance (as well as crop/rotate/resize etc) with one of the photo editing softwares.

The only other thing I might tell you is to pull out just a little bit so that you frame the piece a little more. A mistake I made a lot was to get zoomed in too much.

Oh, and also, you could use a little reflector (foil covered foam board or the like) to reflect some of the light up under the pieces so the detail shows up there too.

Hope this helps.

Oh, and nice turnings by the way. I like what you've done. I think the first one might could use some detail on the foot. But the rest of them look nice with pure form, and good finishes.

Jim,

I use a tripod but not the timer. I will have to try that.

I never use the auto focus. I always go the manual focus route. I printed up a card with different sizes of fonts on it and focus on that placed in the middle of the bowl.

I set the white balance at the beginning of the session. I don't use the auto WB. The backround is not white, I use a variegated backround. Maybe that is the blue that you see. I don't understand why the backround is not the same in all the pictures since I shot all of them after setting the white balance.

I built two light boxes. One for each side. Each box has 4 100 watt bulbs in it. I covered the boxes with white paper so that the light is projected through the paper. All bulbs are incandescent full spectrum bulbs. I have it in a light controlled room so there is no mixing of bulbs.

I use Photoshop to adjust pictures in post production.

I tried to pull out a little on these pictures as opposed to earlier pictures where the bowl filled the frame. I will try to pull out a little more.

I like the idea of the reflector. I could not figure out how to illuminate the bottom of dark bowls. Will a reflector like that cause a hot spot?

Thanks for the comments and if you have any more suggestions don't hesitate to voice them.

What kind of detail were you thinking for the foot of the first bowl? In general I like simple forms and let the wood be the star.

Toney

[Mitchell Cholewinski]

Toney
They are all nice, but I especially like the first one. Nice work. Mitch

[Richard Madison]

Toney,
A uniform white (or black) background may simplify your effort to find the desired result.

I built a little "photo table" with an acrylic top in order to light from underneath the subject and reduce/eliminate the shadow. Would rate it as semi-successful. Might be something to try, but you are already way ahead of me in photo set-up stuff, so maybe not.

Consider showing the first picture again without any software adjustments other than resizing to fit a 640 x 480 box.

[Greg Ketell]

Lots of good advice. Personally I like the light blue background, it sets the bowl off better than plain white would.

A couple of things for you: 1) using white paper as your color balance doesn't always work because white is not always white. Our eyes adjust for things that the camera can't. Get a grey card and use that. They are "guaranteed". 2) The lights take a few minutes to come up to full output/consistent color. If you turn them on and then immediately set your white balance you will find the color drifting throughout your photo session. Try turning them on 10 minutes before you are ready to photo and see if that works better for getting consistent shots. 3) Depth of field has a sweet spot for focus and that is roughly 1/3 from the front / 2/3 from the back. So if you want to focus for the largest aperture to let in the most light put your focus sheet 1/3 back from the front of the bowl.

As others have said, photography is like turning: the more you do it the more you understand it and the better you get. Keep having fun!!

GK

[Robert McGowen]

I know nothing about photography, but the turnings are top notch!

[Jim Underwood]

I could be wrong about the detail on the foot, but I like to separate the foot from the bowl with a bead or something. In this case you have an uninterupted curve, and I'm not sure how you'd accomplish this.

Good tip on the gray card. I'll have to try that out for Custom White Balance.

I don't know whether the reflector would cause a hot spot or not. I figure with it being reflected, it probably won't be as much of a hot spot as if you shone a spot light directly on the underside.

[Ben Gastfriend]

The bowls look great! I won't comment on the photos because they look better than mine. Keep up the good work.

[Curt Fuller]

Well, those pictures aren't bad at all. And all the bowls are nice. But that canarywood bowl is very nice. The curve in the grain and the curve in the bowl go very well together.