Newby requests advice for shooting 400 electrical items

[bondobabe]

Hi All,

I'm a newby for sure with high hopes and need some advice. My camera is a Canon S5-1S. I have a friend that wants me to take approximately 400 photographs of his private collection of electric meters, electric gauges, light bulbs, electric motors and other electrical and mechanical items that I'm not knowledgable about. ALL are under 24" square. I will have an entire room. All items will be brought to me and placed "on the X". I must furnish PROFESSIONAL quality photos that will be no larger than 8x10. My first thought is to purchase two or three umbrellas with radio receivers and put a transmitter on my Canon. Would this be sufficient for consistent results? Sometimes there are items that are glass that have acquired a purple tint to the glass. He wants this to show for sure. However, I want YOUR sugestions as to what you would do. He first will have some "high dollar" photographers come and take a few pictures and furnish an estimate. MY photos must be comparable. How might I best accomlish this?

[leejungil]

I also have the same interest and have taken snaps of must of my items with a Canon and a Profoto Lighting System..


Cheers, Bulbmogul

[marxz]

while radio flash triggers are fun... under the environment you're working in (indoor, small'ish objects) Canon's own IR wireless system would work fine...

if you already own any canon flashes that work in slave or master mode then use them.

Assuming you already have two EX flashes that will work as either master or slave units and you need to trigger them then even for the price of a a couple of eBay trigger sets (or one transmitter and two receivers) you'd probably find you could pick up a used EX 550 for much the same price.

[bondobabe]

The lighting system that you mention...Is it a flash setup with umbrellas or incandescent with umbrellas. What is the price range of your lighting system. I don't want to go crazy expensewise for only 400 shots. Remember, I'm new at this and my questions may seem a bit dumb for experts like you guys. I appreciate your advice!!

[bondobabe]

I do not have ANY external flash units at this time. I'm starting from scratch. I will take your advice and give up on the radio control units. Would you recommend ONLY two remote flashes and NO flash on the camera itself? I am assuming that you would also suggest some brand of umbrella to minimize flash glare. Can you recommend a specific size and perhaps a brand that would suit objects of this rather small size? I know that there are situations where the most costly of items is not necessarily the best. That is where I would rely upon you guys as experts to guide me to a reasonable priced set of accessories. I apprecicate your responses!! BONDOBABE

[marxz]

actually tell you what... ignore what I posted before - probably the easiest thing to do is find a shop that will hire you 2 or 3 constant lights (incandescent or fluorescent) with either brollys or soft boxes for the day.

You're not going to need more than 300 to 400 watts of tungsten per source... if that. I have 3 x 800 watt Tota (the 240V versions FYI) tungsten lights and with those I can, and have, lit up a bus in a small warehouse.

If you can set a custom white balance and the room's smallish' - say single car garage size - AND (importantly) has white or very near white walls and ceiling then another option is use two or three of sets double headed tungsten workshop lights on stands (like you might use for working on your car or lighting up your gazebo - you can generally hire these too from a hardware store, for far less than from a photography store) and set just bounce them off a wall and/or ceiling, place them a meter or two from the wall, set the stand high and aim for the ceiling/wall join. Place one each side of you front left and front right and one behind the subject pulled back a few more meters from wall and the stand lower and aimed more at the ceiling to give some ambient back light. (and of course experiment with positioning so you get the right effect)
maybe turn one of the heads on the front right in so it hits the subject directly - this sort of lighting effect is nice but without control of lighting power may not work, so try as YMMV

find/borrow a grey card ( this is very light neutral grey) and after the lights have warmed up (10 minutes or so) take a shot of just the card then use this to set your camera's custom white point.


turn the lights off when you take a break of more than 10 or 15 minutes, don't move them when hot (or at least be very careful moving them), and let them warm again up before shooting again if you leave them off for more than 30 minutes.

[bondobabe]

Hello MARXZ. Thanks so much for your detailed instructions. WONDERFUL!! I will enquire as to hiring the equipment I need. I do have a question. You indicate to use a grey card for the white balance custom setting. Is that the norm? I always thought you should use WHITE for white balance. Have I been doing it incorrectly all these years? BONDOBABE

[dang]

If you're photographing items with a maximum size of two feet, a better way to go might be using a light tent. Example here: http://www.stevesphotoshop.co.uk/
More examples can be found searching with Google.

They're also easy to make using a white sheet draped over a frame you could easily construct from PVC tubing (with white paper for backdrop & bottom). The advantage being you can use smaller lights, which makes controlling shadows & highlights easier. Other methods are making a box from sheets of white Plexiglases, to direct the light through.

To address your last question... white balance can be set using white I believe.
18% Gray cards are usually used for setting exposure, though in actuality they should probably be around 12% (possible reason everyone uses exposure compensation with digitals especially): http://www.bythom.com/graycards.htm