Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #2

Andrew Hilton

>I think this one is where they are next to a 1/2" skew that I used. Better pic that's in focus but you can't see any detail.

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #3

Andrew Hilton

>This should be the one with it still on the lathe. Not too bad after some serious post-photo sharpening and edge-finding. I used the desk magnifying glass that I take along with the tiny turnings to demos with me so people can see them better. I just put it up onto the toolrest and put the lense of the camera up next to the glass. It didn't look like it'd take this good of an image at the time though.

Still, there has to be a better way, right?

Any help is appreciated.

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

Tim Grenville-Cleave

>Hi Andrew,

Yep, a macro lens should cure your problems and possibly the use of a tripod, fullsize or desktop. Camera shake and macrophotography go hand in hand, but are not desirable. Film speed and lighting may also be worth looking at and playing with.

You could always sort of ... ummm ask a pro what kit and settings he/she would use, then try those.

Don't forget this very medium ... user groups on the web. If those folks are even half as willing to offer help and assistance as the good people here, then you will have an answer in seconds.

Just my two pennyworth.

Tim GC

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

Richard Allen

>Hi Andrew

Those are some seriously small turnings. There is a guy in our club that does small turnings. He even turns captive rings on his tinny goblets.

Take your pictures at the highest resolution possible. That is a 3.2 mega pixel camera and you are showing 0.1 mega pixel. The camera is claimed top focus as close as 2". So a 3.2 megapixel image taken 2" away should let you crop the part of the picture you want with a LOT of detail.

When you take a picture press the shutter release half way until the image on the back of your camera looks in focus. Then press the shutter release the rest of the way. The half press will cause the camera to focus. You can't move the camera after you focus and you can't release the shutter until you press the shutter all the way.

A tripod for the camera is going to do a LOT for the quality of the pictures. If you aren't using a tripod then you should. If you are using a tripod then consider using the timer function so that you can click the picture and get out of the way while the shaking of the camera dissipates before the picture is taken.

High resolution

Pause to let the camera focus (1/2 second or less)

Use a tripod

Use the timer

Hooking your camera up to a TV while you are taking pictures can help a LOT when you are trying to focus and compose the picture. Take your time, these turnings aren't going anywhere and they will wait for you to get everything setup right.

Good Luck

Richard

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

John Lucas

>Richard did an excellent job of answering your questions. The tripod is probably the most critical. You don't have any depth of field ( of depth of focus) when shooting that close so If you are doing this handheld you are probably simply our of focus. Digital cameras have a huge time lag between the time you take the photo and the time the camera takes the photo. So you move your body and camera until the image looks sharp and then take the picture, but by the time the camera actually takes the photo you've probably moved.

If the macro lens won't do the trick try using a set of Diopter filters. If you don't have filter threads on the front of the lens you can simply tape them on. I know some photographer will respond that they won't work but this photographer has used them just this way. The Diopters are close up filters. They come in a set of 3 and you can screw on one or all of them to get more magnification. You can get them from www.porters.com

I once met a guy who did close up work of flowers using and hand held magnifier and a normal lens. It was really surprising how good his photos worked.

To shoot objects that small I use a Bellows attachment with the lens reversed. If I'm shooting digital and don't need the highest quality image I use a macro lens and then crop on the computer. As Richard said shoot at the highest resolution.

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

Richard Allen

>If I gave good advice it is thanks to the help I have read and tried from you and Jamie.

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

John Lucas

>Richard

Close up photography is my forte although I'm used to doing it with higher end cameras or 35mm film cameras. When I tought nature photo workshops I usually specialized in capturing small things.

Now that I have the Canon Digital Rebel none of my close up attachments excepth the Close up filters will work. They are all Nikon mount but won't work on the new Nikons either. Well actually they will work on the D1 but if I had $5000 I'd buy a Oneway instead of a camera.

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

Andrew Hilton

>Tim, Richard, John,

I did take those pictures using a tripod. Still very out of focus. I could either get fairly good focus but it was so tiny that you couldn't see anything or the other way around. *sigh* The pictures were taken with the highest resolution setting and only up to 1024x768. Should I go up to the larger size or maybe down in size but still retaining the highest resolution setting?

I do take finished pictures with the camera attached to the PC (ala' remote pictures as they call it) and it's fantastic! I can get a good idea of lighting, contrast, focus, etc. (as if I knew what I was talking about here) that way as compared to the tiny LCD on the camera. That's a feature I really really like! The dime picture was done that way but the others were done in the shop.

I do the half-release button thing when in normal and macro focus modes. I learned that one early on. Doesn't help much in this case though. It can't focus that close up to get any kind of detail, I assume. This camera has 3 different modes of focus and I've been using the "Center Frame" method. Basically keeping the "smarts" of the camera from trying to determine where it should focus instead of me. Of course, in manual focus mode that doesn't do anything. I just set it to the lowest point on the scale and move the camera until it looks in focus. But, again, there's not much detail that far away on these so I go a little closer and it just doesn't work.

Haven't thought about the timer feature. Good idea when I have to touch the camera to release the shutter. Otherwise, it's done on the computer and there shouldn't be any movement from touching the camera because I'm not.

I guess I'll look into the macro lense and diopter filters to see if I can get up close and personal to these tiny things.

I don't suppose any different lighting would make a difference? I have tried all kinds and about 1000W of combined output to no avail. Problem is getting enough of the light down there between the turning and the camera lense.

Now, I've not been using the zoom at all. This camera has 3x optical and 10x digital zoom. I know digital zoom is no good here. I had thought that doing even an optical zoom would distort things and they'd not be as crisp. Yeah or nay on that? I'll give it a try anyway and see what happens. It's just 1's and 0's anyway.

Lots of good advice. I'm no photographer. I'm heading to the photography websites/forums now to see what I can find there. Thanks, everybody.

Richard,

"There is a guy in our club that does small turnings. He even turns captive rings on his tinny goblets"

Something like the attached picture? That was my first ever captured ring on anything. Done with a skew as all of mine are done to this day.

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

John Lucas

>Andrew

The Zoom should not hurt. The digital Zoom sucks like you said. Cropping it on the computer accomplishes the same thing. I think the diopters will help and they run about $30 to $50 for a set of 3. If you only want one I think a +3 or +4 would be a good choice. They sell a +10 but it does suck. You can stack the set which come with a +1 +2 and +4 to get what amounts to a +7. Youlose some quality but it's still surprisingly good.

The macro lens may but You'll have to read and see how close it lets you focus and at what zoom setting. Some macro lenses use the wide angle setting so even though they focus much closer the image isn't really much bigger if any. Hopefully it will tell you the magnification. That's much more useful. On pieces that size I would think you would want as close to life size or 1:1 as you can get. That would be about the size of the first photo you showed but would be in focus.

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

Andrew Hilton

>Many thanks, John. I'm going to try out various things. I think I'm on the right track now.

Is this camera stuff going to be very much like my woodturning tools? I hate to adapt my woodturning (size, shape, and so on) to the tools I have at hand. So, I make special tools to fit what I'm envisioning instead. I have dozens upon dozens upon dozens so far. It seems I'm starting on the same road with taking pictures of those turnings as well. Why can't I just be happy with a simple 12" salad bowl!

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

Richard Allen

>Hi Andrew

Very cool goblet. He cuts his captive rings with a razor blade. I have heard that others use dental picks for tinny captive rings.

The computer control of the camera is a great way to go and I would continue that way.

It sounds like you have resolution confused with quality. Resolution is the number of pixels. 1024x768 is less than a megapixel. The resolution (I think you are calling it size) is 2048x1536. From that high resolution picture you will be able to crop out four 1024x768 pictures. The pictures you are showing us are about 1/10 of that in resolution.

Good Luck

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

Andrew Hilton

>Sorry. I was using the terms from the camera.

By "size" I was referring to the resolution, yes. Which, it's my understanding in digital photography that camera resolution *should* refer to the line pairs per millimeter of the sensor but that's a different subject. The number of pixels wide by high that it saves the image to internally in the camera.

By "resolution" the camera refers to the JPG compression. A higher "resolution" means that it doesn't compress the JPG file it stores internally to the camera much at all. Unfortunately, this camera doesn't save raw.

The pictures I submitted were cropped from 1024x768 images and then resized to 320x200 in image editing software.

Thanks for the help.

Re: Photographing Tiny Turnings #1

JamieDonaldson

>Andrew- you have received several good hints that will help and I suggest trying the zoom in macro mode- I am not familiar enough with your camera to give a specific answer, but some cameras only make macro images at a specific focal length, either long or short, but not in between. Have you considered a microscope with camera- those pieces are teeeny!