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Lighting Help


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I have very inadequate lighting any where I try to take a photo inside, outside they come out pretty good except I get the trees and power lines in the photos too... Don't tell me to take my photos outside either...

Alan appears to have 2 lights in all his photos, and they are great... What do I need??? Spot lights, yard lights, or light bulbs??? How far are they spaced apart, and how high from the object being photographed are they??? This is really an issue with me... I need better lighting... Any help will be greatly appreciated... Thank-You very much for your time...wacko.gif

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I use camera flash too. About one foot away. I used to use the dual lamp setup, but its a pain in the butt...takes up too much space. Dani is right about the manual focus and high f-stop (for greater depth of field). You can see two light sources in my photos, but that is because my flash is a twin head. The difference between flash and screw in bulbs is a lot. Your cameras flash has a lot of output power. And its a clean light that you can get rid of the rest of the ambient light with. not saying you cannot use 2 light bulbs, but its not very handy for packing around. I suggest spending about a half hour experimenting with your camera and flash. Different settings, distances, etc. You should find a sweet spot somewhere along the line.

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trying differnt things with your camera is dang good advice! my camera has several lighting settings as well, one has blue control, one for sunlight, one for indoor lighting. each has a color difference for capturing true colors. Sometimes the hard part is getting a true shade of pink to show, expecially in glass for some reason. But I know i have said this before, but using a matte blue background can help sometimes. Something to do with how the digital cameras see the colors I guess. Should you ever encounter the problem. try the blue, it usually works.

(lol Kevin... yeah I take mine serious too... obviously :P )

ps... nice Cat, love the aventurine

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thanks Dani. I agree about the backgrounds. And you are correct. Digital cameras, especially point and shoots....try to do all the thinking on what the final picture should look like, and although they do a great job most of the time, they are not 100 percent. Thus the different backgrounds to "fool" the camera.

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trying differnt things with your camera is dang good advice! my camera has several lighting settings as well, one has blue control, one for sunlight, one for indoor lighting. each has a color difference for capturing true colors. Sometimes the hard part is getting a true shade of pink to show, expecially in glass for some reason. But I know i have said this before, but using a matte blue background can help sometimes. Something to do with how the digital cameras see the colors I guess. Should you ever encounter the problem. try the blue, it usually works.

(lol Kevin... yeah I take mine serious too... obviously :P )

ps... nice Cat, love the aventurine

of course i know you take it serious, what i said come out wrong as usual, i bought those bulbs when i first got started, and to be honest i never could get my flash to work and get what i wanted, i wish i could have though i could have saved some money lol

As far as lugging my bulbs around, i really don't plan on taking my bulbs anywhere they are for here only, and i have room so they better suit me. Plus my camera didn't take really good close ups that far away so my flash would be to bright.

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I have been taking all my photos in the close-up mode, and the flash doesn't work in close-up... now this will be a whole new world taking the photos in manual mode, if i want to use the flash... I do have the room to set up some lighting, that would be using the wife's sewing machine/cabinet as a table (22"X38")... I really do want to go with lighting other then the flash... "Kevin" do you have your bulbs in any kind of reflective housing??? how far away are the bulbs from the object being photographed??? The hardware store has a portable light, with a round/metal shiny reflective thing that the bulb goes into, and it has a large pinch/squeeze clamp on the opposite end of the bulb, with maybe a 6' cord... Seems like it might be perfect...

wacko.gifI want to thank everyone for your responses, very helpful and not out of the question yet...

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I have been taking all my photos in the close-up mode, and the flash doesn't work in close-up... now this will be a whole new world taking the photos in manual mode, if i want to use the flash... I do have the room to set up some lighting, that would be using the wife's sewing machine/cabinet as a table (22"X38")... I really do want to go with lighting other then the flash... "Kevin" do you have your bulbs in any kind of reflective housing??? how far away are the bulbs from the object being photographed??? The hardware store has a portable light, with a round/metal shiny reflective thing that the bulb goes into, and it has a large pinch/squeeze clamp on the opposite end of the bulb, with maybe a 6' cord... Seems like it might be perfect...

wacko.gifI want to thank everyone for your responses, very helpful and not out of the question yet...

I had the same problem, i like to get into the matrix of the marble the best i can, i could never achieve that with a flash on my camera.

Funny thing is when i first seen Alans pics, i had to try and get mine just like his, so i tried A LOT of different things, from LED to regular bulbs to flood bulbs to the flash and could never get really vivid colors and depth like i could with the Full Spectrum.

I did use the shields but not anymore, i took them off, i am probably using the same ones your talking about with the clamps. I just took the shields off, it seemed they was giving off to much of a reflection on the mib.

Heres my very basic setup, and it works well for me, it may be to much for some people, i know Derick is a big time Photo hobbiest and has probably tried everything under the sun and has much more experience than i do so i have to do what makes it easier on me.

I tend to keep the lights about 6 to 7 inches away, and you can aim them on the mib how you want, i been using a Grey background for every mib now it helps a lot. Very seldom will i use plain back or plain white.

I am using a 10Mgp Sony Cyber Shot DSC-T70 Touch Screen digital camera, i rarely use a setting over 3Mgp for marbles, you just don't need to, i have everything set on Manual Mode, i use the Natural Daylight settings for color balance since my bulbs are day light bulbs this works great. I always use the Super Macro which is one of the best features on the Cyber Shot, some times i have to adjust the EV brightness levels up a few or maybe down a few depending on the mib and back ground, you'll eventually find your sweet spots.

It's also a very good idea to not have any other light source on even if there way across the room they will still affect the lighting, the other bulbs could throw the coloring off, and give it a yellow look.

The next step should be getting very familiar with your cameras software the image editing program, to adjust colors, trim & crop or sharpen it up!

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Hope this helps :)

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