Here is a photography experiment I performed today. I took my photo cube outside into open shade and took a couple of pics. I had the camera setup with the white balance set to Auto and the pictures came out quite blue. I had to do a lot of work in Photoshop to get them to this state. I'm thinking of setting the camera to daylight to see if I get a better color balance. I think using the photo cube outside has promise, but needs some work.
The hollow form is spalted figured maple with Blackwood collar and finial. The body of the HF is finished with Krylov Matte spray and the collar and finial are finished with Behlens Woodturners finish.
The spheres are (from top CCW) Silver Maple Burl, Claro Walnut Burl, Tambootie and Hard Maple. All of these are finished with Forby's Tung oil, Beall buffed and waxed.
The photo cube works great outdoors in direct light. If your in the shade it will either be blue or green depending on how much sky or trees change the light. The sky itself is basically very blue. In direct sunlight you might need another layer of cloth over the top and maybe one side depending on where the sun is.
If you have the photo booth in the shade of your house such as the North side then you may have a White balance setting that looks like a shady house. That one will get you close. If you have a custom white balance setting that would be the best way to do it.
Of course indoors if you put one light up high and to the side so it lights the top and one side then you will have almost the same thing. You might have to add another light but move it back further so the top light is brighter. That should simulate the daylight.
I wrote an article an article on shooting using sunlight for American Woodturner issue 17. 2 page 38-39
Your software correction is a success -- the fix is not obvious.
Nice pieces. I'm surprised the Krylon gave that much definition on the maple since it's a surface finish. I use it occasionally too -- in the form of a brand of CAMS (clear acrylic matte spray), but not when I have grain to pop. I guess this is a good indication that it works on spalting, where oils often turn too dark and yellow. Good to know. The "matte" part is not necessarily the case -- after about three coats, you can shine it up quite nicely with Abralon (1000-4000), which I just did on a small box elder HF.
Out of curiosity, what's your method for making spheres? Those look very nice.
The lighting, shadows, and highlights look great. And the turnings! Nice spheres.
Just curious, what camera and lens did you use?
Nice idea - I never thought of taking the photo cube outside. Maybe set up under a pop-up shelter with a white sheet overhead if it's not overcast? Outdoor light is almost often incredibly blue. The daylight option should help tremendously.
As for color balance, does your camera let you set a custom white balance? The cameras I use makes it easy: put a white card or sheet of paper at the position of the subject and push a button. I always set a custom white balance until I found some photo bulbs that were so close that the white balance setting maed no difference. (I also turn off all the room lights so they don't interfere with the color.)
I've done a lot of color correction over the years to salvage photos but I find the result always suffers, usually in proportion to the amount needed!
One thing looks odd in your first photo. There is an odd white "edge shadow" in several places and one dark "edge shadow":
These don't quite look like over-sharpening artifacts. I wonder if they are artifacts from the color correction. If so, they might go away with a white balance correction. Could also be from the lens used.
It looks like you have the same problem I have with the backdrop - it tends to get small marks and defects as it ages. I spend some time with the photoshop clone tool to remove these (if I feel like it!)
Sometimes it's hard to keep things from rolling around when photographing, especially spheres and cylinders. I generally use one of two methods: position the object on a few grains of salt, or chock them with tiny hidden wedges cut from a soft rubber artist's eraser.
Since you asked for critiques (and I usually don't offer them otherwise!), one more thing: The vessel photo appears to be tilted slightly. It's a minor thing but it caught my eye immediately.
Photoshop has a simple way to immediately adjust this that I've used 1000 times: with the measure tool (ruler, under the eyedropper tool) draw a line that SHOULD be be exactly horizontal or vertical, then choose Image/Rotate Canvas/Arbitrary. Photoshop will fill in the numerical angle field with the precise angle needed to make the line you drew exactly horizonal or vertical. I once worked in a department that had a room full of "professional" graphic artists, some working daily for decades with photos and graphics - I was surprised that none of them knew this method. (People apparently don't read manuals.) I found this link just now in case you are interested:
....cube type enclosure outdoors is the lack of consistency in the "big light source." A well developed indoor lighting set-up will give more uniform and repeatable results come rain or shine. Color balance and exposure can be standardized with either a light gray or white background, then the guesswork and reshoots are minimized, and correcting with software is seldom as accurate as a good original image made in camera.
Thanks Gary. Yeah, I don't like to use oil on spalted wood either. I usually take some 0000 steel wool to it as a last step. It gives a surface that feels better in your hands than the pure matte finish. If you want to bring it up more, you can put a coat of wax on it.
Thanks to all for your suggestions. Here is an update to the experiment. I did a couple of things in the camera so that i'd have less to do in PS. One was to change my metering from matrix to center weighted. The second was to use use Active D-lighting.
I think the results are getting better, but they are still a little blue.
Kind of off topic, but do any of you have a tripod pan head that you absolutely love. I have a Proline ball head that I find difficult to make minor adjustments.
......by side comparison, the second image made with a "Cloudy" color balance preset seems more accurate. Many current d-cameras have such presets, some labeled "shade," that do a very good job of correcting color imbalances for those owners willing to read and understand the instruction books!(;-D)There is probably little difference in exposure between matrix and center weighed metering in this application.
I use metering as purely a starting point. The meters really only know average. If you have an Ebony Vessel and Holly vessel setting in the booth you will get 2 completely different readings with the meter, but your lights never changed. So which one is right. According to the meter you would have to over expose the holly one and underexpose the ebony one to get them correct. Bracketing is the best procedure until you learn to properly judge Histogram and even then bracketing is still a good option. Bracketing is where you purposely over and underexpose the photo as well as one exposure based on the meter setting. Usually one will be much better than the others. When you get some experience you will do smart bracketing. I'll use the holly vessel as an example. You know the meter will try to make it average or gray so instead of over and under exposing I would shoot one exposure dead on and two over exposed by varying amounts.
For shooting art work Active D lighting really doesn't do what you want. In fact you really don't know what it's going to do. I played with it for a while and finally decided it was useless as far as shooting art work.
>>>If you have an Ebony Vessel and Holly vessel setting in the booth ...According to the meter you would have to over expose the holly one and underexpose the ebony one to get them correct.
I have been known to cheat. Expose problem areas separately, stack in Photoshop layers, then use a mask to put both exposures (or key features of both) in one photo.
This is not necessarily for the impatient or a tight deadline! (can be a royal pain in the neck and take forever to get it right.) Usually one has to be carefully extracted from the background.
The thing I really hate to photograph - a black llama! Almost impossible to get any facial features without blowing the background.
John I was talking about shooting them independantly. The meter sees the white holly and sets the camera for that exposure, then the meter sees the Ebony and readjusts the exposure for that. So you have 2 different exposure settings but you never moved a single light so the correct exposure is really in between those and should not change.
Here is a photo I took this week of my friend Pete Wiens work. Unfortunately this one was toward the end of the session and he was getting tired and rushing things. Ideally I would have changed to a smaller light to get the texture in the white piece to show up more. All I had time to do was change the position of the top light and play with the side light exposure and position.
My boss and I used to joke about things that would be impossible to shoot. One was a black cat in a coal bin and the other was a chrome trailer ball. Well I've done both, more or less. Had to crawl into burning chamber of the schools coal fired heating unit and photograph the slag on the wall. Boy talk about dirty and good think I had my spelunking gear. Anyway the engineering department had developed some sort of coating for the walls of the chimney to keep the slag build up and wanted photos of how well it worked. So I was basically in chimney trying to shoot black slag on a black wall with hand held flash units.
The other one was glass artist who started making round spheres about a foot in diameter and then putting a mirror coating on them. They obviously reflected everything in the scene. Looked terrible in the studio so I took him out to a field and we put the artwork on a pedestal and then I shot it with a 600mm lens from a distance so I was just a small dot reflection in the piece and the piece itself reflected all of the environment which sure looked better than seeing all the lights and rails and cabinets in our studio.
