3 Quickie Gun Photography Tips

[BerettaNut92]

Some quickie gun photography tips to help folks out who are new at the game...

1. Don't use direct flash.
I don't like to say 'never' but under most conditions it tends to wash out the gun's details, make the backdrop too harsh looking, etc. I rather go with what little crappy dim lighting is available and try to salvage it than use a direct flash. If you have an external flash on your camera or if your camera is capable, try bouncing the flash off something like the walls or a white flashcard.

2. At home, set your white balance to 'tungsten'.
If you're stuck indoors with artificial lighting, set your white balance to 'tungsten'. Tungsten may be shown as a little lightbulb. Some of us come home after dark and can only take photos in artificial lighting. Your eyes are wired to your brain which adjust to the warm yellowey house lights but your camera doesn't. I find most digital cameras' white balance settings work for most conditions except for indoors where you usually have to manually set it so the picture doesn't come out all yellowey.

3. Use 'spot metering' for stainless and other bright parts.
Most cameras default to overall evaluative metering (I think that's what it's called) where it takes the brightness of what you have framed and adjusts your exposure accordingly. Because everything is so tactical and dark, it brightens it up and washes out the bright parts. You're better off going to 'spot' and 'grabbing' a bright part like a stainless steel slide or blade, which will make the photo darker. But when it's darker you can still brighten everything else and preserve the detail of the bright parts, whereas the bright stuff will wash out all the detail if you didn't.

Sorry if I'm a little incoherent, it's late I'll post some examples later this weekend...skunky needs a combat nap.

 

[wintermute76]

Don't necessarily use the tungsten setting, if you have fluorescent lights, the tungsten setting will look funny as well.

My F707 adjusts white balance indoors, I haven't had a situation where I've had to set it manually.

Sorry to nitpick Skunkabilly

Just my experiences anyways.

 

[Kevlarman]

Even better, some cameras have a "one touch" white balance setting. Just grabe a piece of printer paper and set the balance to that!

Oh, tripods are your friends!

 

[BigG]

Thanks for the tips, Skunky. Now if I can just learn to read all the Japanese picto language on my camera.

 

[BerettaNut92]

BigG, they're in english, just turn them upside down

WIntermute, I know that's why I said 'those yellowey houselights' That's cool that the Sony does that, a lot of cameras can't figure it out...only reason I didn't buy the Sony is I didn't want proprietary (at the time) memory. And kinda big, but great cameras!

 

[Mike Irwin]

I installed some halogen daylight bulbs in the track lighting I have in my living room.

I need to take some pains to drape them with a sheet, but overall it works fairly well.

 

[Kobun]

I sometimes hold a (white) sheet of paper in front of the flash, to wash it out more.

First I set up some other lights so I have the least amount of shadow, and the use the paper trick.

 

[ScottsGT]

So what would the setting be on my Mamiya 645 using 160 asa print film? Should I shoot it at f5.6 or go for more depth of field and use f16?

Do I sound like a dinosaur talking here?

I really have to sell this old medium format stuff! Anyone want to trade some guns for a really nice camera rig?

 

[Chipperman]

160 asa print film....
Your camera has film? Is that the little rolly-thingy that people used to put inside a camera?

 

[ScottsGT]

Yea, film. But wait 20 years from now. All of your digital photos you archived on CD will look real nice when you realize that computer technology has long passed reading a jpg off of a CD. And there will be no photos of all those nice guns and the kids growing up. This is one of the major concerns of photo archivest right now. A lot of photographers are refusing to give up the film due to the nature of computers and format changes. Just think of all the photos taken on 9/11 of the terrorist attacks. How many of them went to film? I bet 55 years from now there are less photos of 9/11 than there are of Pearl Harbor today.
Negatives last forever. Well, almost.

 

[Andrew Rothman]

Nope.

Copying a few CDs onto the newest UltraMiniTacticalDataStorageUnit is a lot easier than keeping track of, and preserving under ideal temperature, humidity and acid-free-osity, hundreds and hundred of little strips of plastic film.

Yes, CDs will be supplanted for everyday use, but I seriously doubt that the billions of existing CDs will ever be orphaned.

Skunky: Great, easy-to-understand tips. Good work.

 

[ysr_racer]

Film / negatives never went away, what makes you think CDs / JPGs will?

 

[ScottsGT]

I'm in the TV broadcating profession, and we use a lot of different formats, including a lot of PC stuff for doing video streaming. we have seen a few formats come and go. True, Jpg and some of the others should be along for a while, as long as the users let the mfgrs. know that it is still needed. Just think, floppys are now going away. Think of it this way, You put your negs away for safe storage and forget about them until you need them 20 years down the road. Do the same with lets say, 2000 to 4000 CD's. Technology starts to change to a new format, but it evolves slowly. You keep telling yourself, "I'll skip this format upgrade and wait for the next." Next thing you know, you have skipped 2 or 3 format changes and the latest won't take Jpg. I'm not saying it is going to happen, but it could. We have seen a LOT of this in the video industry. Can't tell you how many thousands of 3/4" video we have gone through here transposing the info to DVC tape format. We have the half of the Fox Movietone news collection in the nation here, and those guys started transposing everything over to safety film and at the same time they went to Betamax. Then to 3/4" then to 3/4 SP, then to BetacamSP, and now to DigiBeta. Just wait until they can make a high res image with half the memory that is used now. Something is going to have to change.

 

[gun-fucious]

CD-RWs, HTML and jpgs are a standard that will be rosetta stoned for the future

 

[Penforhire]

Great tips Skunk. If you're as cheap as I am, don't forget that wrapping aluminum foil around things like a 3-ring-binder make zero-cost light reflectors (or taping white paper to it) to multiply one light into several.

Part of what Skunk was getting at is the 'blown highlight' in the digital world. Once a digicam gets to pure white (usually RGB at 255, 255, 255 levels) information above that brightness is lost. If you expose for the highlight you can pull details out of darker shadows than you might imagine possible (by adjusting "levels" or "curves" in those regions).

For still shots of high contrast subjects I find myself often taking multiple exposures at different exposure values and combining them digitally. If your camera is on a good tripod the images will align pixel-perfect as layers in an editing program. A great example is a S&W 686+. If I get the stainless body exposed with some nice specular highlights I have a heck of a time printing the texture in the black rubber grips. The answer is to combine an exposure of the stainless with an exposure of the grips. I also pull detail from the black sights and the integral lock (yeah I know, boo on the lock).

With digital images sharpening is a whole 'nother ball-o-wax too. All digital captured images require sharpening (that you might not have needed to do in a traditional darkroom) but your camera may do some automatically without you knowing it. There's lots of info out on the web but here's what I end up doing --
The "unsharp mask" function (Amount %, Radius pixels, and Threshold inputs in Photoshop) is a "must" and is present in most mid-level image editing software. Sharpening is my last step and the amount varies depending on the output (print or web) and input (for me 3.2 MP digicam or 4000 DPI slide scan). Lately all my work is from 3.2 MP to ink jet printing so... I make at least three sharpening passes. First is A,R,T values near 20, 30, 6. That sounds funky but try it, it has a subtle haze-reducing effect. Second is near 100 to 150 , 1.0 to 1.8, 4 to 8. The amount & radius vary to avoid halos at edges. The threshold varies to not add noise in continuous-tone areas (sky, shadow). The last pass is near 500, 0.25 to 0.35, 4 to 6. This also sounds funky but it jacks up fine edge details without adding halos (watch for color noise in shadows though). Note that any or all of these steps might be done through a masked area so I don't add noise, say in a sky.

i would sharpen less for web display since you don't have as much dot gain (colored ink smearing edges). The print-sharpened image, as done above, can look over-sharpened on a monitor.

 

[Old Fuff]

ScottsGT:

Anyone stiil using film, either because they want to, or because that can't (or won't) afford buying a new digital camera should keep in mind that negatives or slides in any film format can be scanned. After that you have the best of both worlds. Store the negative or slides and play with the .JPG's.

 

[Standing Wolf]

It's worth your while to read the section of the Photoshop manual on unsharp masking, then experiment with it.