In article ,
Ed Huntress wrote:

On Mon, 02 Apr 2012 09:59:15 -0400, Joseph Gwinn
wrote:

In article ,
Ignoramus14985 wrote:

On 2012-04-02, Richard wrote:
On 4/1/2012 7:20 PM, wrote:

The quality of pictures does matter, not in the sense of photo art,
but in the sense of conveying what is being sold and creating a good
impression.


All the more reason to avoid using flash if possible.

Avoid $50 cameras because you do not have any control over the
exposure. Get a camera with independent control of aperture and
exposure time as well as exposure compensation so reflection off a
white wall does not swamp the dark object in front of it

For small stuff macro mode is a must as well as tripping the shutter
without touching the camera on a tripod (I do not have a cable so I
use a 2-second timer).

A light box for small items is highly desirable. You don't need to
spend a ton. I made mine for about $5:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/2768312...7625011848457/

I use a Cannon A720IS. My previous camera was also a Cannon. I like
the option of both non-rechargeable and rechargeable batteries.

Pictures get edited in Irfanview.

Michael Koblic,
Campbell River, BC

I think you are asking a bit much of the people he described.
They aren't professional photographers in any reach - except that
he's paying them to take pictures.
A properly working AUTO setting would be better.

Exactly.

As for the light box, a lot of stuff does not fit into such things.

A room painted white works pretty well, as does a large shop-made tent.

With a studio flash, there is no problem getting enough light, so great
efficiency isn't needed. The objective is to have enough light so the
camera can stop down (giving great depth of field). With light, the
setup becomes non-critical.

Joe Gwinn

Specular reflactions are a bane of industrial photography, and light
tents or other diffusion can make things easier. I use a couple of
sheets of drafting paper for small objects.

But the other bane is a lack of contrast, which a light tent makes
even worse. So sharp lighting sometimes is needed. One recent article
I wrote and photographed has three photos in it -- really pedestrian
industrial illustration -- and I had to use on-camera flash on all
three to avoid undifferentiated shadows.

I shot all three both ways, with diffused light and with harsh,
on-camera flash. In each case, I needed the direct flash.

Something like Iggy's work probably won't allow time or expertise to
play with lighting, so a light tent, or a couple of big transmission
umbrellas, would be a good all-around solution that does the job most
of the time. "Black-on-black" shadows are the biggest killer in that
type of work and overall diffusion at least solves that problem.

The result will be some annoyingly flat photos, but that's better than
shadows in which you can't see anything. If it were me setting it all
up for a non-expert photographer to do the work, I'd use two big
lights, each at 45 degrees from the lens axis, or maybe 60 degrees,
and I'd hang really big drafting-paper sheets in front of each. The
ideal is to have the sheets as far from the lights, and as close to
the subject, as possible. I'd use light stands and gaffer's clips
(spring clips, like big clothes pins) to hold the diffusion sheets.
Sometimes I do the same thing with transmission umbrellas. Regular
reflection umbrellas don't work out very well for that task because
they are too far from the subject and you don't get enough diffusion.

All true, but situation dependent. But with machine parts, I've found
the diffuse flat light works pretty well. My shop is painted white, and
I use a studio flash pointing at the wall behind the camera.

The next step up is a ring flash on the camera, plus a white tent.

The next step is crossed polarizers, where the camera lens has a linear
polarizer, and the lamps have a perpendicular polarizer. This
eliminates all specular reflections, and makes shiney metal vanish. One
usually detunes the setup so the metal will show just enough.

War story: Many years ago, on an Olympus Camera group, I noted that the
pros photographing models all seemed to use Hasselblad cameras with big
ring flashes, which flattened things, which didn't seem like a good idea
a good idea with such models, and expressed mystification. The answer
that came back was that the ringflash eliminated the bags under the eyes
from to much partying, and too many controlled substances. Oh. Never
mind.

Joe Gwinn