Magua in a lightbox - Attempt #1

DerekH

DerekH

Handsome According to my Mother
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Talked to Tradewater this afternoon and he got to talking about photography for awhile. Got me motivated to get off my duff and try to put a lightbox together finally and try to take some decent pictures for a change. Let me preface this by saying my camera is probably 4 years old, has been beaten up and bloodied, and dropped in the sand more than once. I know nothing about photography other than what I have seen other people go on about here, and they almost always have a much bigger camera, so to say I am blundering through this would be putting it mildly.

The first three pics the only things that changed aside from some knife positioning (due to a rather ill-tempered cat taking exception to my work area) the only thing changed is the position for the lights, nothing else. The last one has a different backdrop to provide contrast. Both the white backdrop and the red one were purchased this afternoon, so they still have fold lines and fuzz on them. Anyways, here they are.

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The next set are the same exact pictures with a very minimal amount of post-processing done in Photoshop CS3 (Auto Contrast image adjustment).

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Anyways, I think my choice, for this round at least, is picture number four after a bit of processing. Colors seem a bit more vibrant. What do you folks think?
 
Not bad at all. The red really does make that handle pop. Good job.
 
I've been curious about the light box, looks great especially for you first attempt............cool knife too....;)
 
Thanks Trade.

It is one of my favorite knives Todd. Top 3 easily, top 2 almost certainly.
 
Yeah..red background's looking good. Nice. Lightbox..hmm. My pictures always suck, perhaps I should read up on this.
 
Good work. I agree, the red backdrop works well. Not sure what you process in, but Photoshop Lightroom is a great program for tweaking the exposure, white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. I think you work for a non-profit company? Check out Techsoup, maybe you can get a copy for your business computer on the cheap.
 
mrn8 said:
Good work. I agree, the red backdrop works well. Not sure what you process in, but Photoshop Lightroom is a great program for tweaking the exposure, white balance, brightness, contrast, saturation, etc. I think you work for a non-profit company? Check out Techsoup, maybe you can get a copy for your business computer on the cheap.
Click to expand...

I used Photoshop CS3. I could upgrade, but I don't use it enough to really justify spending any money on the newer version just yet. Speaking of Techsoup, I actually finished our "donation request" to Microsoft an hour ago. FMV (fair market value) of the deal was $16,000.00. In my mind, that is utter bs, but whatever, it cost us like $400.00. ;)
 
I saw a thread once where a guy set up a light box to shoot his knives to sell. It was a permanent fixture in his clean room of his shop. I thought this was a awesome set up. Hell he even had the inside of it set up with rocks and fake moss/grass. It looked great. I eventually want to do the same thing. Problem is, I don't have a clean room in my shop, I have plans to add one off of the side. It would serve as my leather making/sheath room and office. The problem is money. The problem with money is, I don't have any! :rolleyes:
 
Todd the beauty of the lightbox is you can take it down and put it up when you are done with it. Permanent is fine, but I don't have space for something like that either, so my solution was something that would fold up and store away pretty easy. Or at the very least hold the rest of the stuff. Like those two threads Dubz linked to, it is not that hard to put one together using fairly common stuff. For mine I just used a couple of desk lamps I got at walmart for about $5 each. If you got any questions gimme a holler.
 
I have one of those pop-up lightbox setups. I never messed with it all that much, but seeing how putting a light on top changes things, I may play with it now and see what I can come up with.
 
I have a fold up jobbie myself. I think mine is an 18" light box, iirc. I use 2 of those halogen 500 watt work lamps for mine. It came with a couple of small lamps, but they were an utter joke.
 
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Fours sheets of foam board, two clip on work lamps and some hundred watt daylight bulbs from the Dollar Tree works pretty good.
 
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