Occasionally I will want to
shoot a group of marbles and this is the setup I use for that.
Instead of mounting the camera on the copy stand I put it on a tri
pod. I sit the marbles on a
dark non reflective surface, in this case a piece of black cloth and shoot
the picture.
Equipment
Camera: Canon SLR Digital Rebel XT
Lens: Canon Ultrasonic EF 100mm macro lens
Copy Stand: Testrite Copy Stand CS-2 with Fotolite 23-C
Lights: 2-26 watt 5000K Fluorescents
Wireless Remote Control: Canon RC-1
At the time of this writing (March 5, 2008) you could get the camera
for about $300, the lens was about $470, copy stand $85, lights and RC
another $50. So for about $900
bucks you could get a decent setup.
A quick comment, I’ve seen people, Galen on LOM for example take far better pictures than I do
using a Fuji FinePix S700 which cost about $200. I’ve also seen people spend
$4500 on a camera body alone and get some stunning results.
I’m not advocating spending tons of money on a setup, this just
happens to be what I use.
Fortunately for me my wife is into scrapbooking and she lets me use her
camera, otherwise I’d probably be stuck using the camera on my cell phone
J
The Setup on the left is what I use to shoot most of
my pictures.
Occasionally I will use a SV Light Tent to cut down
on the hot spots on the marbles. I
simply set the whole copy stand in the light tent and then work through the
top to manipulate the marble and camera.
The picture on the left was taken with the light tent
and the picture on the right with out it.
I know that some people really don’t like the hot spots but shooting
with a light tent slows me down too much.
I’m mainly taking pictures for cataloging and identification purposes
so at this time they don’t bother me too much.
Also with the quantity of photos that I’m taking speed is of the
essence. I will acknowledge
however that the marbles would look better without the reflections and at
some point I will probably invest in a solution to the issue.
This is the setup that I
use to take pictures of marbles that fluoresce.
I simply set the fluorescent fixture onto a small white box and set
it behind the marble on the copy stand and turn it
on. For the most part it seems to work pretty good.
©2008 Joe Street
