Lots of good info in this post. I will have to try the shower curtain for a light diffuser. I use the two 500w halogen work lights and sometimes get a glare. A tripod is a good  investment if you want to take quality pictures, it holds the camera a lot steadier. The nice thing about digital is you can take a lot of pictures with instant feedback.

I used a backgound in this picture and it didn't cover the desk the rifle was resting on so I filled it in later. The nice thing about using this material is you don't have to be a Photoshop expert to make it look ok.



I posted this one a while back in the wallpaper thread. SA 1941 M1 with my father's medals from WWII.



The comment about keeping your feet out of the picture also applies to tripod feet.

Originally Posted By cugir: Gun Photo How To...

here is my try.

do you have a how to on filtering.  or do you have a custom filter you would care to share?

i used the sharpen filter, but everything else i tried would mess it up pretty good.
I think part of my issue is to harsh of a light.

Here are a couple I took the other night.
http://www.wambold.ca/pics/firearms/G17k.jpg

http://www.wambold.ca/pics/firearms/pair.jpg

Tag-shizzle My-nizzle

tag

Tag?

....

Yeah, tag.

Tag.. Need to read it all again.

Here's about as clear as I can get.  My stupid camera will NOT take a clear picture without the flash.  Sorry about the flash - I've tried everything other than shing a table lamp right on the dang thing - maybe I should try that.

How do I take good outdoor close-up photos of putting greens to display disease symptoms?

Like this:

bumped,

'cause I needed to reference the tips again.

This thread needs a tac in the photo forum.  

tag

cugir,

My 3 latest posted attempts.  With a nod to your tips, and trying to remember them during the 'shoot'.  

1st & last have pretty good detail and shadowing.  Gun on leftover countertop material, leaning against the spare mag, auto exposure, taken at dusk outside.  Maybe a bit too blue-ish.

White background pic sucks.  
My first attempt at your 'light-box' setup.  2 -  500wt halogen lights in the garage, white diffusion sheet, white background & reflection board.  Checking the manual now, to figure out 'spot metering' on the subject.

not sure how I missed this thread....


great advice here...I wish I knew more about studio lighting.

I was thinking about buying a 3-light setup and messing around with it.

.

Oh yeah.

Originally Posted By cugir: Originally Posted By chewbacca: Here is my humble attempt.  Any reccomendations would be apprciated. tinypic.com/et76sz.jpg ETA:  What photoserver should I use to make the pic smaller, the pic looks better smaller?  Also, this pic is taken qwith a 1999 2 megapixel camera that I have no clue how to use. You image looks great and has a lot of impact with the muzzle facing the camera and the aggresive/mechanical design of the revolver. When it apperaed onscreen it sad 'whoa' out load. Changing the size is easy if you have Photshop, I will outline the steps here. If you do not have Photoshop, you will need to use another imaging program to acheive the same things. I use a Mac. Maybe someone here can suggest a Free program for the PC which allows image size changes, sharpening and JPEG saving options. Saving an image for the web is not too difficult. First you will want to resize the image using a photo editing program. Image size is a little confusing as it can de described in a couple different ways. First is the pixel size. You could say an image is XXX number of pixels across the long dimension of the image. For instance, suppose your monitor is set at 1100 pixels wide and you are at ARFCOM. The Firefox window and ARFCOM borders and avitars surronding this message eat up some pixels so the actual room for an image in this message might only be about 700 pixels on an 1100 pixel monitor. By this logic it would be best to keep the image under 700 pixels wide so the viewer can see the whole image without scrolling. The best thing to do is open the 'image size' dialog box in your editing program and type 600-700 in the 'pixel dimensions' field for the long dimension of the image. If your program does not have a pixel size field then use the physical size field and the resolution field to acheive the same thing. 9.72 inches at 72 pixels per inch is the same as 700 pixels wide. 8.3 inches at 72 PPI is the same as 600 pixels wide.. tinypic.com/et8m7a.jpg After the image is sized, you can add some 'sharpening' to fix the blur caused by resizing. The best sharpening filter is photoshops 'unsharp mask'  Try the settings below for your 600-700 pixel images.  For larger images intended for print increase the radius to 1.0 and adjust the amount to taste. tinypic.com/et8uur.jpg Now that it is small and sharp its time to save it as a JPEG file. Use the 'save as' option to choose JPEG format and choose a MEDIUM to LOW quality setting. If the program gives you an estimated JPEG size, shoot for 50-100k tinypic.com/et8vbc.jpg The last thing to do is upload the file to a free server like www.tinypic.com/. Here's your pistol made smaller, sharper and brighter via photoshop.

Here's what I did with it using ACDSee. It's certainly not in the same catagory as Photoshop, but it does such a good job and is so easy to use. I love it. I don't know if it can be picked up seperately as I got it with the HP 1.3mp camera I bought 4 yrs ago.



Great thread cugir! Thanks!

I take a lot of pics of my firearms with my digital camera, but most of them suck. I know enough that natural light is better than the flash, but beyond that I'm not too successful. I like how this one came out:



but it was just luck. This one came out good too, except for a bit too much glare:




This is a really great thread, BTW.

I thought that I would throw one up here too.
I snapped a couple more of my G22 which can be found
here

A few of mine that I like.  I just need to work on my centering, use of light, and holding still.

Originally Posted By Thrash1982: i18.photobucket.com/albums/b122/Thrash1982/Picture004.jpg

Thrash, that looks REALLY good... how did you do it?

tagged\

Mucho macho taggage.

Danny

That's beautiful David.

Now can you reduce it to a size that'll fit on the monitors of at least 20% of the population?

great stuff

Originally Posted By dpmmn: WHat do you think of this pic??? images.snapfish.com/344%3C8%3C%3A323232%7Ffp63%3Dot%3E232%3C%3D363%3D437%3DXROQDF%3E2323%3B7%3B924%3B56ot1lsi

looks like shit to be honest

Took this one last night, I know there's all kinds of problems with the pic, but it was a 10 minute exercize in lighting.  Better results are sure to follow... (with any luck).

tag because I was thinking about this thread today.

Originally Posted By SavageSlackie: Originally Posted By cugir: Gun Photo How To... here is my try. do you have a how to on filtering.  or do you have a custom filter you would care to share? i used the sharpen filter, but everything else i tried would mess it up pretty good. I think part of my issue is to harsh of a light. img478.imageshack.us/img478/9907/p1160007large5gg.jpg

A little late I know but,

Here is the 1911 sharpened up a bit and color corrected.




I used the unsharp mask in Photoshop at threshold 4, radius .7 and amount about %300-400.
You can get away with very high amounts if the radius is small.

More important, the black balance of the image was red.
The grey balance was a bit red as well as Yellow.
A couple moves to the red curve black point and blue midpoint (for the yellow) fixed this and give the image a much richer look.

Clean shadows and highlights are important.

Another good type of sharpening is highpass sharpening.
First flatten your image then duplicate the background layer.
Run the Filter>other>highpass at .7 - 1.2 pixel radius on the top layer.
Set that layer to hard light or soft light.
This type of sharpening really brings out texture but was not enough for the 1911 image.

Now go check this out

www.mrx.no/mrx/joeys_grunge_photo_effect.php

Originally Posted By Zack3g: Nice pictures...but I'm still a fan of stickman's compositions when it comes to pictures of guns.

I recently got DSL and since then I've been able to cruise the AR15 picture threads in the AR forum.

Stickman's images are clearly some of the best in those threads. He's also produces quite a few of these great images and seems to be the most respected photographer here at arfcom.

Many have said they wish they could shoot like stickman so it made sense to me to explore his technique and post the results here.

I make no claim to how stickman actually shoots his images but am simply making observations based on what I can see.

>>>When I first saw stickman's images in the AR picture threads, I said 'WOW' out loud. There is something to his images that is pleasing and arresting. His are the images that jump out from the rest and get the most compliments.

Stick says in one thread that he shoots things very simply and does not do any post production that could not be accomplished in a traditional darkroom. I've only looked at the 2 most recent picture threads where he seems to use natural light mostly but has hinted at using studio lighting. I've not read where he clearly describes his technique anywhere.

In an attempt to figure out how he gets those kick ass photos, we'll break it down into two parts. Subject matter and technique.

For subject matter, it helps that stick seems to have access to at least a few really cool rifles and accessories. This helps quite a bit but is only part of the equation, after all, he could take the same cool shots of airsoft, or some other machinery.
What really helps is that he places this gear on simple backgrounds, usually a white sweep which looks like formica maybe. Sometimes the white looks like a backlit piece of plexiglas. I'm not sure if he has a photographers sweep table that will hold formica and plex or if he sets a piece of plex on some sawhorses or maybe he shoots on top of an old  lightbox used for editing film with daylight fluorescent bulbs. Many of the shots are on these white backgrounds while others are usually rifles laying on dark colored nylon bags to create a simple dark background.

Make sure the rifle is clean. Stick doesn't seen to have much dust in his shots and the EBR is an oily dust magnet. One trick that can help greatly is to use a black T-shirt to clean your rifle. I know you got one in your tactical closet that can be sacrificed.  Black T-shirts leave almost no lint and the lint that remains will be hard to see, even close up.
Set your simple rifle arrangement on your simple background and start looking for interesting angles. It helps too look through a camera while doing this.

We can break the technique into three parts. Camera, lighting and post production.

Stick says he used an older camera which has been replaced by a 20d recently. He shoots many closeups so a camera with macro and possibly manual focus would be good. It is possible to get outstanding photos with most any recent camera of decent quality so long as you can turn the flash off, focus reliably and adjust exposure. Stickmans images have impact in part because of the great sharpness in many of the images. He says he does very little post production in Photoshop so I'm not sure if he is sharpening there or if his camera spits the image out at that high degree of sharpness.
At any rate, the image must be resized for the web which again destroys sharpness so I can only assume he's doing at least the final sharpening in an image editing app like Photoshop. Many of his images also have great depth of field, even the closeups. If he is indeed shooting available light then a tripod would be a requirement for the long exposures. Using the self timer helps reduce camera shake as well.

For lighting, it looks as though many of Sticks shots are taken near an open window or rollup / garage door. Some of the shots look as there might be other light sources besides the daylight filling on or skimming across the subject. It also appears he is using some sort of controlled lighting in some shots. This studio type light looks to be soft and directional in many shots and might be a commercially available softbox, umbrella or diffusion panel of some type. The shots on the bottom lit white plexiglas probably have some sort of artificial light underneath, possibly a strobe or Fluorescent fixtures. Hot tungsten lights can be trouble underneath meltable plexiglas.

The final part is the post production. Stickman says he doesn't do much in post but he does make some smart decisions which are clearly evident.
First and perhaps most important is the size he saves his images at for the AR picture threads. The images are 900 pixels wide which is just about perfect. A browser window that opens at its default size on a typical high res monitor is likely to accommodate an image at 900 pixels wide. The viewer might be able to stretch the window wider to view images saved at 1000-1200 pixels wide but often don't, they instead scroll by. There is a photographer in the AR pic threads who is great but his images never really 'pop' cause they're all slightly cropped on the right side in default view. Another post-prod trick is the 15 pixel (appx) black border stickman uses on most all his shots. This really, really helps the image stand out from the crowd. The Stickman watermark serves many purposes but one is to give further subtle credibility to the quality and exclusivity of the image.  
The final step would be to sharpen the final image at its final size. I'm not sure if or how stickman is sharpening but I would suggest the unsharp mask  filter in photoshop at a setting of: Amount %80-200, Radius .7 pixel and Threshold 4 for starters. Some of sticks shots like the closeup of the serrated knife blade look really sharp like they have some 'high pass' type sharpening going on. Both of these sharpening techniques were obtainable in the traditional darkroom.

Of course your success at all this photo stuff depends on the images you compose in your viewfinder. You would need to point the camera at something interesting and go from there. Stickman obviously has the ability to consistently produce great images. Who's to say whether the rest of us could or should emulate his style. Stickman said in one post that he just tries to shoot stuff he hasn't seen before, it's ironic his style is being analyzed here. Maybe he will stop by this thread and give us all a few pointers.

Now enough yakkin' and onto the pictures.

These are some attempts at the stickman look.



This is available daylight coming from my skylights. The rifle is held by a clamp and pointed at my film editing light table. The light table has GE Chroma50 fluorescent bulbs in it. Exposure was f5 at 1/15  on a 20d with a 50mm macro lens.


here is the setup




Here is another shot on the light table with the available daylight.



This shot is not terribly exotic but I wanted to see if I could get the stick look simply by shooting sharp and clean with the border treatment. It is 1 second at f16. The light table is a little yellow and a little hot on the inside of the trigger guard. I'm not sure if stick uses a setup anything like this or if he elevates the rifle from the surface a bit so it's not so bright.


Here's the setup



I'll try some shots with studio lights in another post.

Here is my procedure for the sizing and borders in photoshop. I just wrote an action that does it with a single button push. To write your own follow along.

-Open a horizontal image.
-Open the actions palette and create a new action named 'stick size and border' or something.
-make sure the red record button is lit in the action palette. (here we go, don't mess up)
-Image>image size  check 'resample image bicubic' set 'document size resolution' to 72 ppi and set 'pixel dimensions width' to 870 pixels.
-Filter>unsharp mask  set amount %85, radius .7 and threshold 4
-Double click the background layer in the layers palette to make it a layer
-drag that layer thumbnail in the layers palette (likely now called layer 0) to the new layer icon in the layers palette, this will duplicate the background layer.
-select the new layer in the layers palette (likely called layer 0 copy)
-choose Filter>highpass  and set a radius of .7
-Set the blending mode in the layers palette for this layer to 'soft light'
-choose Image>canvas size  and change both pulldowns to 'percent'. Enter %103.45 percent in both fields.
-click the 'new layer' icon in the layer palette. (likely called layer 1)
-move this new layer 1 to the bottom of the layer palette pile and make sure it's selected (background layer position)
-choose Edit>Fill and in the 'contents' choose 'black'
-Click the 'stop' button in the action palette

This action will size the image and give it borders. It will also create a layer that has the high pass filter on it. This layer (likely layer 0 copy) will further sharpen your image. You can toggle this layer on and off or change it to 'hard light' blending mode for more punch.

Here is how to create a watermark similar to stickmans to display on your images.

-Use the type tool in photoshop  to type your name and fill it with white, I used the typeface 'stencil' here.
-choose this type layer with your name in the layers palette
-hit the 'layer style' button (has the letter f) at the bottom of the layers palette and choose 'stroke'
-in the 'layer style' dialog box that opens up, choose a stroke size of 2 px and a fill type of a middle grey, hit ok
-change the opacity of the type layer to %50



All that left to do is save the image for the web.

-choose layer>flatten image to flatten the type, borders and sharpening layers.
-choose Image>mode>convert to profile (or Edit>convert to profile in CS2)
-in 'destination space' choose 'sRGB' The other options read Adobe ACE, Relative Colormetric, Black point comp and dither should both be checked, hit OK.
-choose File>save for web
-choose JPEG and quality 30-50 or shoot for around 100k or less, hit OK
-upload your images to a host like tinypic and post it here.

Here is one last image from today taken with my old coolpix 990 handheld in the above setup. The color fringing is pretty bad but overall the old camera looks ok.

.

This is one fine post!  Well done and I hope you win an ward!  I am about to learn all the intracacys of a Nikon Coolpix L3 after many, too many years with an Nikon-SLR.  Thanks for the guidance.

... Great thread!

<tagged>

Here is my first attempts using mostly daylight coming in through the window. I used two Canon 580EX strobes off camera for fill light. Next time I will try it with 4 studio lights. It seems that relying primarily on natural light incurs a sharpness penalty. It also forced me to ISO 400 for these handheld shots, which added some noise as well. Camera was a Canon EOS-1D Mark II.

3 hrs left on my graveyard shift, and I am bored....

So can you guess if I used natural lighting or artificial?

http://i76.photobucket.com/albums/j36/creampuff464/DSC_3002.jpg

Originally Posted By puffthemagicdragon: 3 hrs left on my graveyard shift, and I am bored.... So can you guess if I used natural lighting or artificial? i76.photobucket.com/albums/j36/creampuff464/DSC_3002.jpg

Umm.... artificial?

Softbox above, and to the right small kicker light with honeycomb grid to fill in the dark spots.

I almost forget what it was like to work the graveyard shift, before we had the internet .

Great KB article!

http://www.brianenos.com/forums/index.php?act=Attach&type=post&id=5162