Picture Practice.

RRfireblade

RRfireblade

Grammer Are For Stupids
Silver Member
So I came up with a fast a simple home studio.

After some reading and searching I put this little set up together , about $30 worth of parts , sets up in like 5 mins :

Studio.JPG

Studio-Project-003.JPG

Studio-Project-2.JPG


Simple PVC frame that folds up , couple yards of muslin , 2 shop lights with day temp bulbs.
You can hang or clip the lights anywhere outside the 'tent' for best lighting and the muslin acts as a huge diffuser to flood the subject with non directional light.
There's a camera cut out in the top.

Here's what I got so far . . .


Butt2.JPG

Editted for Walker ;)
Inlay.JPG

Joint1.JPG


Thoughts ?
 
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For those who asked , this is the parts break down :


The setup is all put together from parts purchased locally. The fabric came from Walmart (Muslin and some white jersey for the background) as did the shop lights. Probably $8 for the materials and the lights are $5.99. PVC tubing is from HomeDepot (one length for pipe and a few elbows) and the bulbs I found at Lowes. Think they were about $5 , they are just those curly energy savers but in 5600k (natural daylight) temperature.

If you want more detail I'll be glad to provide it. The cool thing is with the PVC you can make it any size you like , nothing is glued nor does it need to be as far as I can tell. The muslin diffuser can also be left running wild. I just stitched up the 'tent' cause I'm a little OCD about some things. :)This size was set for cues and cases of course but swap out a leg or upper frame peice and you can fit just about anything in there. ;)
 
lefty84 said:
those are some nice photos and a pretty simple setup. great ingenuity!
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Thanks !

And thansk to you too Doug.

FYI , these pictures were taken from the top of the frame , 3-4 feet over the cue , and using only the mechanical zoom.

I'm just starting to play with other methods to get the same or better results. Plenty of buttons and other thingys left to press. :)
 
RRfireblade said:
Thanks !

And thansk to you too Doug.

FYI , these pictures were taken from the top of the frame , 3-4 feet over the cue , and using only the mechanical zoom.

I'm just starting to play with other methods to get the same or better results. Plenty of buttons and other thingys left to press. :)
Click to expand...

Are you able to do full length photo with this setup?
 
First & third cue pics look great! The second pic looks good as well, but still has that light reflection down it that I'm trying to avoid. Nice setup! :cool:
 
When some of the set ups for taking pictures like this costing over $500, this is a creative design.
I like what you did and appreciate your sharing it with all of us.

The pictures are great and looking forward to any other helpful ideas as you progress,
myron
 
Jazz said:
Are you able to do full length photo with this setup?
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For sure. How I arrived at the overall height was based on the no zoom full length cue shot.

Here's a full case shot (37" long w/ handle)

Case-002.JPG
 
WalkerInTN said:
First & third cue pics look great! The second pic looks good as well, but still has that light reflection down it that I'm trying to avoid. Nice setup! :cool:
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Good catch.

Yeah , like I said these are the actual first pics that I tried. The beauty of this set up is all you have to do is swing the lights around the frame till any reflection is out of the way. I must have not noticed it on that shot, maybe cause it's running with the veneer. . . or cause it was like midnight. :)

Also , I bought 100w (27w actual or something?) lights cause I thought I needed all I could get but they are apparently a tad overkill. I may drop down in wattage or just add a piece of muslin over the light itself for additional diffusion.
 
No one else said it (maybe they've already seen it), but NICE CUE! That is a unique take on the inlays.

Thanks for sharing the photo-taking setup.

Scott
 
Picture perfect

Thanks for taking the time to write this up. I'm sure a lot of us will be using your setup for cue pics. I've been thinking about doing some sort of setup but I didn't even think about using inexpensive muslin. Very nice pics and nice cue with the matching case!
 
ScottR said:
No one else said it (maybe they've already seen it), but NICE CUE! That is a unique take on the inlays.

Thanks for sharing the photo-taking setup.

Scott
Click to expand...

Thanks a bunch. That's my newest baby ,I put pics (not very good ones) up a little while ago. That's part of what spurred on this little project. Everything there is my design , I built all the inlay patterns and built and designed the fixtures/clamps/jigs he now uses for the veneered boxes. This was the first set he had put in a cue. The matching case was done by Garth @ Onq Cases using the same cad drawings used for the cue patterns , he did an amazing job matching it up all by hand.
 
WalkerInTN said:
First & third cue pics look great! The second pic looks good as well, but still has that light reflection down it that I'm trying to avoid. Nice setup! :cool:
Click to expand...


Here's one from the same set , I must have moved a light afterward and didn't notice ;) :

Inlay.JPG
 
RRfireblade said:
Here's one from the same set , I must have moved a light afterward and didn't notice ;)
Click to expand...
Beautiful! That's working great. Seems ot help solve all the problems I'm having. Looks like I need to do some shopping! :grin:

Thanks very much for posting this by the way! :thumbup2:
 
great

That whole setup is terrific.....thanks for the info. I need all the help I can get..LOL
Steve
 
That setup is ingenious! Maybe it would be a goog idea to experiment with moving the lamps from the top of the frame to a side or another to have light coming in from an angle and not directly from top. I have been thinking about what could have been the lightsources and all the reflecting areas (white walls around, etc.) to have this photo as an outcome.

I am saying this because when looking at your second picture you have light coming in from top or maybe from two sides at the same time - here is what I am talking about.? I don't know what could have been the exact setup but you have reflection on the top and the bottom of the forearm either. That is why I have said that maybe moving the lightsource around could decrease the amount of reflection or perhaps put it down to only one side.

I hope that you will not take these offensive or as a negative criticism, I do not wish to say anything bad just telling what my questions / thoughts are. I am waiting for your reply as I am sure you will provide many more plans, setups and thoughts that are extremely useful when taking pictures of our cues and cases.

Edit: I have done a search on your camera. That is a good camera but if you are serious about taking more detailed pictures I'd recommend purchasing a super-compact camera. Nowadays I use my girlfriend's FujiFilm S9500 which is an extremely good camera and is getting cheap on e-bay. my reason for saying this is because these cameras can take supermacro pictures from 1 cm and have a better CCD, bigger objective, RAW picture format (which is better than in quality than JPEG), etc... The point is that you can take even more detailed pictures in better quality with such a camera.
The very best extra of this camera is that you can manually adjust both the zoom and the focus with extreme accuracy so you will not have to "play" with the zoom buttons to get exactly what you want and you can set the focus wherever you want - it is important for example when you'd like to catch the rings above the wrap and would like to have the wrap and the forearm shady.

While using your camera I recommend using the lowest ISO setting (it is 50 on yours which is very good) so that you'll have minimal "noise" in the picture.

Bah, sorry for being this long...
 
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