doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion Classic & Custom Single Barreled Sporting Rifles @ doublegunshop.com Photography Help

I picked up a good camera and made up some lights trying to get some decent pictures. I am slowly getting better results, but still not there yet. Any hints or suggestions would be appreciated. Camera is a Nikon D5000 with a 18-55 zoom lens. Lights reflecting off a piece of foam core poster board. Running f8 and shutter speeds of 1/5-1/2 sec. I think I need to get a plain white background, and play with the white balance a little more. Here is what I have at this time. Thanks a bunch to Michael for his assistance thus far.




Not sure why photos have been showing up so small on this site. Loose a lot of detail.

Thanks,
John

looks good to me. i will ask my dad for his recomendations (a real shutter bug).

John, As suggested in another thread I can right click on View Image and get a bigger picture. Dave is looking into this for us.
Your pictures are good and light years ahead of when I first started. Play with the background and balance and you will be fine.

If you shoot RAW you can adjust the white balance on-screen when the photo first opens up (along with a whole lot of other things). The "auto" white balance works well for me. I adjust it in the camera to my tungsten lights.
Although it works for Mike, I would not suggest a white background, 18% gray puchased on a roll.
Also, the Nikkor 60mm Micro is my alltime favorite SLR lens!

(DINKY!)

Thank you Steven. I shot a few in RAW, but did not really know what it was, and did not have a program to open them. Just did some reading online about it and it looks like it does have some advantages. Michael, do you do your editing in RAW? The camera came with software that I assume will open the RAW images.

I may have to check out that lens, I am not happy with the focus on this one anyway. The lens almost seems loose and has a tendency to move slightly as you take your hand off of it after focusing. Not sure if it is just due to it being a cheap lens, or if something is not correctly assembled. The lens came with the camera as a package deal, so I am sure it is not a very hi-end lens.

Thanks again,
John

Most zoom lenses have a sweet spot. Your lens movement might be the auto focus, make sure it is switched off on both camera and lens. I'm sure Mike told you about the focus trick, I use a strip of newspaper because it has different type sizes and can be wrapped around to fit different surfaces so I have a better idea of depth of field.
You will have to move the camera and tri-pod back and forth with the 60, but it is an absolute honey for clarity and sharpness. Will do everything from in-your-face to full-length, about 10 feet back. (My favorite since I retired the 210 Rodenstock on my 4x5.)
With Photoshop you can get into altering contrast, sharpness, brightness and innumerable other things. I use these on occation, but I still like to rely on photography skills. You will need to learn to crop and size, and save archived stuff in TIFF, low-rez in JPG for posting, there simply is no end....
Best,
Steve


(BTW: the Hepburn is sold!)

Man... that is really a fine picture of that Hepburn. I can only imagine how it is at full resolution.

Glenn

Thanks Glenn, it is a wonderful lens!