Brian Searle
How I Photograph Pottery 2
Here's an update on my previous photo rig. I'll only annotate things that have changed, so take a look at the old one for more detail.
Reader Flickablogga gave me a great critique on the previous photo and pointed out that I had huge double reflections by using both lights at full power. This is something I hadn't noticed before, but you can see it throughout most of my previous work. Based on his critique, I've moved using only one main light and one for fill with a cheap white umbrella. In the past I've used wax paper or copy paper to tone down the harsh lights, but $20 umbrella gives a much larger source and does a much better job without muting the light too much.
One of the problems with my pots is that the stop range between the whites and blacks is huge using the shooting strategy above. At the same time, my pots have very saturated colors and if I compress the exposure so that the highlights are properly exposed, I have trouble hanging onto the correct color. The reasoning is that our eyes can see a dynamic range of 10-14 stops while our cameras can take photos of only about 8 or 9. If you compress the range so that you can hang onto lights and darks properly, you lose something in the middle.
To compensate for this, I've also recently tried shooting pots in HDR (high dynamic range) as well. I'm skeptical of this strategy for now, but I think the pros are currently outweighing the cons (there are definitely both). I've been taking 3 to 4 photos in 1.5 stop increments and combining them with software (Photomatix Pro). This gives me the extra 3-4 stops that our eyes can capture but the camera cannot.
HDR removes a lot of the camera work of getting the exposure correct, but it does take more computer work afterward. I have the HDR software tuned to keep the correct color saturation of middle exposure but uses information from the extreme exposures to keep the whites and blacks properly exposed. In the process of converting to jpegs, the whites and blacks get compressed but the middle exposure is left the same (the reverse of shooting normally). For example, here is one pot with HDR and without HDR. Without a doubt, the HDR version has much more accurate color representation in the mid-range of the exposure (the interesting part).
However, I think something is lost in the HDR version-- the colors are almost too well balanced. I think this is primarily because jpegs can only represent 8 stops of data and the extremes are just too compressed. What are your thoughts? Also, if you Strobist guys can think up a way to do this without HDR, I'd love to about hear it.
How I Photograph Pottery 2
Here's an update on my previous photo rig. I'll only annotate things that have changed, so take a look at the old one for more detail.
Reader Flickablogga gave me a great critique on the previous photo and pointed out that I had huge double reflections by using both lights at full power. This is something I hadn't noticed before, but you can see it throughout most of my previous work. Based on his critique, I've moved using only one main light and one for fill with a cheap white umbrella. In the past I've used wax paper or copy paper to tone down the harsh lights, but $20 umbrella gives a much larger source and does a much better job without muting the light too much.
One of the problems with my pots is that the stop range between the whites and blacks is huge using the shooting strategy above. At the same time, my pots have very saturated colors and if I compress the exposure so that the highlights are properly exposed, I have trouble hanging onto the correct color. The reasoning is that our eyes can see a dynamic range of 10-14 stops while our cameras can take photos of only about 8 or 9. If you compress the range so that you can hang onto lights and darks properly, you lose something in the middle.
To compensate for this, I've also recently tried shooting pots in HDR (high dynamic range) as well. I'm skeptical of this strategy for now, but I think the pros are currently outweighing the cons (there are definitely both). I've been taking 3 to 4 photos in 1.5 stop increments and combining them with software (Photomatix Pro). This gives me the extra 3-4 stops that our eyes can capture but the camera cannot.
HDR removes a lot of the camera work of getting the exposure correct, but it does take more computer work afterward. I have the HDR software tuned to keep the correct color saturation of middle exposure but uses information from the extreme exposures to keep the whites and blacks properly exposed. In the process of converting to jpegs, the whites and blacks get compressed but the middle exposure is left the same (the reverse of shooting normally). For example, here is one pot with HDR and without HDR. Without a doubt, the HDR version has much more accurate color representation in the mid-range of the exposure (the interesting part).
However, I think something is lost in the HDR version-- the colors are almost too well balanced. I think this is primarily because jpegs can only represent 8 stops of data and the extremes are just too compressed. What are your thoughts? Also, if you Strobist guys can think up a way to do this without HDR, I'd love to about hear it.