playing with my new makro lens ...
 

Good morning gentleman

while christmas holidays i spent some time in doing pictures with my new macro objective lens and studio lights. using a nikkon D90 and pc program to control the camera, doing some finishing work with photoshop at the computer, brings this pictures. i hope you will enjoy …..


wolfganggo ...:thumbup:

I love the "floating" effect you created for the subject piece!

Very nice images!!

Great photos. I got a new new camera and a macro lens for Christmas too but I will not be able to take such photos. Thanks for showing.

By the way, what size did you make the attachments?

Neil

Beautiful work. Congratulations.

You must tell us how you obtained these wonderful effects.

John :thumbup:

Thanks for showing a rare apparently functional magazine saftied police luger!

Absolutely the best photos I have ever seen, thanks for sharing.
Lon

Beautiful. Very nice work sir!

Thanks for the great pics!
I finally understand how the luger magazine safety works!
Bob

how i did this pix....
 

for all of you interested in doing this kind of pictures.
i tried two years to picture my parabellum so, that it shows her best side.
sometimes you find good pictures in the net, sometimes there are tips and tricks attached.
using a summary of all these tips leads to my pictures.

first of all i had to learn, best background is white.
i tried velvetfabric, handtowels, wood, cotton fabric, blankets, etc. in different colors. always got poor results, the background looks unnatural and/or makes color reflections at the gun.

second i had to learn, you have to use the best light you can get.
artificial light has to be diffused, more than one light source is necessary to get acceptable results. now i use at least 2 spots with diffusing umbrellas and one spot directed to the room ceiling.
you need this to eliminate shadows and to get enough light to turn the aperture to a minimum to get the most possible depth of sharpness

third i learned use a computer program to control your camera,
a long shutter time shows you without mercy every little vibration. tripod for your camera is mandatory……
set ISO away from auto, to a little amount, lets try maximum ISO 200. the pictures are getting sharper, you will be able to zoom in without pixeling of your picture.

very important
lighten up you picture when shooting, i use about +2 1/3 LW. you will get better results, you will suddenly recognize much more details at you gun.
do an manual whitebalance, without this, you will ever get guns in a false color.

copy the pictures to you pc and finish them.
personally using ACDSee Pro 4 to correct color and exposure value (EV), brighten up dark corners at you gun and set an good looking of color and brightness. do not use it in excess, but use this tool, it’s nice to see suddenly details coming up from brigthend up shady parts of your gun
try to set all pictures of an set to approximately similar looking of the gunblueing – use one specialy good looking picture as master in an second window at your desktop to match following pictures.

last i take the picture and edit it with adobe photoshop.
i cut the gun out of the picture, using the path tool. do not try to cut it with the magic wand, the result will be unsatisfactory.
it takes me many hours to learn the usage of path tool, layers, cutting out and inserting into a new picture … photoshop is a very inscrutable tool for untrained users like me
shortforminstruction … open the picture, using the path tool, cut the gun, photoshop should do this in an new layer, cut all holes etc. (for example the open part inside the triggerguard) also with the path tool, gather all layers with cutouts and copy it to an new, empty picture.
now you should have the gun exclusive, without background. last step, to set your personal background …

I added some pictures within the next posts to show you the steps described above…..

regards wolfganggo ..... :bigbye:

.

false whitebalance and false EVadjustment
 

samples:

white balance set, EV adjustment changed
 

samples:

finished with ACDSee and photoshop ...
 

samples:
just after posting i have seen that i have forgotten to cut away a little part inside the triggerguard, sorry...

i saved the last one in correct manner, now correct cut....

wolfganggo .... :bigbye:

.

Wolfgang,

You're becoming a professional photographer!
Great pictures for sure.
And thanks for the tutorial about how to obtain such results.

Douglas

I'd hate to have to dust your studio...
dju

its my mothers teddybear and krimskrams collection.
so she will do the work to keep it clean..... :D

Well done

--Dwight

Excellent tutorial... many thanks!

Wolfgang,

Your pictures are superb! Very nice, and quite a bit of labor.

In video, we use a false color (green or blue) background for automating the cutout of foreground images and insertion of backgrounds.

This technique would work well in photoshop, and could eliminate quite a bit of the labor you must invest to rotoscope out the image. The key is to not allow the background color to reflect on the firearm's highlights. That is done through lighting. Tools that select by color can even do the cutout with the transparent shadow intact.

I also use a black background cloth called Duvtyne. It absorbs light. This allows me to set the exposure of the firearm itself more accurately.

Your need to stop down automatic exposure is because of the reflectance of the white background. It all works out in the end. Exposure meters are calibrated to an 18% reflective grey card.

Marc

Great photos.

hy marc
thx for this infos. i tried with colored backgrounds, but as you mentioned, the shadows at the reflecting parts of the gun where colored like the background.
also i was not able to cut the background away with the photoshop software.

but

after your post i will try to get this light eating stuff for the back, and do another try with both, colored background and the blackstuff.

thx for the infos


wolfganggo

The Ansel Adams of luger photography!

Try a greater distance between the pistol and the background color.

Put them into separate light pools. One flat light for the background. Another key light and accent light for the pistol. It may be necessary to use shields to block light.

This should help eliminate the color reflections.

While this effort in photographing is greater, the photoshop work should be easier.

It's also possible to paint out masks in photoshop.

Marc

Your efforts have truly paid off!

I actually like the photo with the stand vs the floating...

The close ups are truly professional qualtity!!

Bill

One great background to use is photographers' seamless paper. It is available in lots of colors. My favorite is a grey very similar to the greycard used for metering light precisely. (18% grey is very close to Caucasian skin tone, so in a pinch, a hand is always handy.) It provides a neutral background, and with proper lighting used for the shoot, I've never really had to Photoshop afterwards, except to remove blemishes--such as a cord one wouldn't necessarily want to see in a pic of a lamp. That paper? It usually comes on a 10' roll which is also very long and, I presume, expensive. I've never had to buy any, however, because a photo studio will give you a remnant, or, damaged, roll. A photographic setup can use-around 20', since it's run from the dispenser down the wall and across the floor, to eliminate the corner ordinarily visible at their juncture; and a studio will usually discard a roll when it's too small for them to use. I once obtained a partial roll that had been bent in handling, about 1/3 along its length. I put it on the miter saw and excised the offending area; this left me with a 3' and a 6' roll, plenty wide for my purposes.

Another photographic attachment to help us in our documentation of Lugers is the polarizing filter. This fits over the lens, and is adjusted to filter out polarized light--exactly the kind of light bouncing a reflection from a gun's surface to the lens. Adjusting to eliminate offending reflections is easy; you get what you see if you have an SLR and the viewfinder shows the same image that the lens sees, and will be recorded. My current equipment is somewhat lacking because the filter that I used to use does not fit the camera I'm using now. I'll get around this somehow and use the technology for some, I hope, good Luger documentation. Promises, promises...

Excellent work! The detail is razor sharp! I too have found that once you start working with Photoshop and get the hang of it, you become addicted! You suddenly realize that you'll never be able to look at another digital photo without asking yourself how it could be improved, or, if it has been "manipulated" by someone else.

I missed seeing this thread earlier but am really impressed with your photos! Very appreciative of your "how-to" reply also. I'm still struggling with photography so any of the tech help makes it a little easier.