Buy a piece of Bristol paper. Cost = 1.10€. Use a bottle of Volvic water and a Japanese dictionary as paperweights. It should work with Perrier and English dictionaries too. A friend of mine is so bold as to say that a lot of medium-sized objects should do the job with the help of gravity. Crazy him. Results:
What kind of brush is that... Cool setup for photos by the way I really like your photos - keep it up!!
Thank you for the kind comments. I forgot to add important details. Here’s what I posted on SMF: __________________________ Using a flash bouncing on the ceiling is critical. The point of a light-box is to diffuse the light and get smooth shadows. Here there are no walls of thin paper to fulfil that precise purpose. The sheet of paper must be very thick. This is crucial. I first tried with plain drawing paper but the result was unsatisfactory: As you can see, the texture of the paper is visible and the play of lights is poor at best. Also, the fact that the sheet of Bristol is rolled up before use allows for a slight, natural curve, as seen on the first photograph. It is that curve that creates a nice transition to a greyish white on the upper part of the photograph. __________________________ DragonBoy> the brush is a Simpson Tulip 2 in super. Yukio
Yukio - great setup, extremely practical. I assume you're using a speedlight of some kind, or hi-powered additional lighting in the pics above with the brush, etc. But what, exactly, are you using.....is my question
Hello Joe, For the shots with diffused light, I only used a flash turned towards the ceiling. That’s all. For the pics with the Castile bottle, I used a professional set-up that you probably won’t be able to find in your rural city of Chicago: Take a bottle of water. Put a bedside lamp near it. If you want a red light, add strawberry syrup. :laugh042
That's it....I may never post another photograph again! Compared with your's, Yukio, mine look like ebay pics! BAD ebay pics!
Amazing! I would have never guessed as much. I think you're right - you guys overseas have all the good stuff
Hi Yukio, Would you mind detailing your gear, I think you have a D70s, SB800 and 100mm macro is that correct? What lenses would you recommend? Can you use all the Nikon AF lenses with the D70? I used to have an N90s about 5 years ago with the SB200? speedlight, but was having trouble with the film advance so I got rid of it. I am getting the itch again. Thanks for sharing all your Great photos and the pointers you provide to us all. Neale
Neale, I use an old D70 (not a D70s) with either the versatile 18-70mm kit lens or the super great 105mm VR f/2.8 macro lens and a SB-800. You can use all the AF lenses with the Nikon D series (D40, D40x, D50, D70s, D200, D2H, D2X(s), etc.). Note that the D40 and D40x (which is a D40 with a 10MP captor) don’t have a built-in autofocus motor, which means you can only get autofocus with the lenses that have their very own built-in focusing motors (and there are a lot, actually). I’ll be honest. The digital photography world left childhood when the first 6MP captors were released but it’s still in its adolescent years. Digital cameras of ANY brands still lack in dynamic range and I often have to correct the exposure with Photoshop. And believe me, all the shiny photos you can see on magazines are also corrected with Photoshop. Now that should not prevent you from investing in a good DSLR. Both Nikon and Canon offer a wide range of products. Now the question is, what do you want to do? (And thank you all for your nice compliments)
This is embarassing... Compared with Yukio's anyway, but what the hell.....thought I'd give it a shot. Handheld Canon SD400. $5 aluminum shoplite with regular 100w bulb. Some sort of poster paper (40lb I think). The paper is white, believe it or not. However, the fabric over the box is sort of cream colored and the lighting is, well, 100w of raw incandescent power! Anyway, here ya go...
If you let the white balance on auto and the source of light is an incandescent bulb, the photo always comes out with a yellow cast. This can be easily corrected with Photoshop.
Easy for you to say! Mostly Greek to me, my friend! I don't have Photoshop and wouldn't know how to use it if I did. :ashamed001 Though I must say, I'm glad YOU have it - look what you did with my photo!! One of the reasons I don't have Photoshop is that I probably took more shots to get the one I just posted than I've taken in my entire life! Well, a slight exaggeration, but only slight. Never been one of my passions, but who knows...I've rather enjoyed taking some of the amateurish shots I've posted here so maybe there's another addiction in my future. I'm sure it's like brushes and creams - just WAY more expensive! Thanks for fixing my photo!
The "white balance" that he mentioned is an adjustable setting that your digital camera might have. You should be able to find mention of it in the manual, and how to use it. Photoshop? Yeah, it's a great program with a great (big) price tag! So check out something else that's a very powerful image manipulator similar to Photoshop, except that it's called Gimp.
I wrote Photoshop, but I actually meant any photo software. Nowadays, they all have an auto exposure function. Here I used ACDSee. That’s really simple, you just press one button and that’s all. You can read this Photoshop for Idiots thread I posted on B&B moons ago.
