Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

[Guest]

I shot some BEAUTIFUL mic with a translucent candy purple last night. I've tried and tried to get good shots of it to post, but I can't seem to get the color of the pic to come even close to the actual color of them...........I've tried auto settings, manual settings on my camera..........light balancing...etc.

Can anyone who has shot translucents give me a tip? I don't seem to have trouble with standard colors......just translucents...........Thanks

Jeff

[BeeBob]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

Have you tried direct sunlight with no flash?

[CumberlandCowboy]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

yep.........did that this afternoon............still bad.............very frustrating............

[Guest]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

Might want to try and take a lot of pictures starting up close, and move further back at all angle's and dont use the zoom. Put all of them on your PC and zoom from there, then just pick out the best one. The closer you get with zoom or with holding the camera close will restrict lighting. I know I have truoble capturing colors.

[Guest]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

You could try tenting it with a white sheet with bright lights around it. That will give you good light with no glare. Try with and without the flash. I use this when shooting dark shiny colors with pretty good results.

[CumberlandCowboy]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

thanks guys.........I'll give it a shot.

Jeff

[rbroker]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

Believe it or not, I took a pic with the swatch in a card board box....No light, no reflections and used the flash in there. It came out pretty darn good. I guess it depends on the color though.

When i took pics in a light booth all I get is the white reflections of the booth.

[Guest]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

pictures suck so much. It seems so simple too, I mean I can see it, why the hell can't my camera. A trick I learned, and it will only work on smaller things, is to scan them. Drop the piece on your flat bed scanner...cover it up with the lid if it is flat, or a sheet or towel or something if not, and scan that sucker. It has to be totally dark in there but you can get some really good colors like that.

The way a scanner takes the picture, the light is always straight at the piece, so reflections don't get picked up like they do w a camera. You can pull out some really nice colors that you can't see at all with a normal camera. If you really wanted to be a geek...you could probably make yourself a box that could use the same technology...just bust up a wide bed scanner and mount the works on top of a large box you can seal the light out of. There is a magazine called Make that had an article about a year ago on making a camera from a scanner...same basic idea. If you want to see some examples of scanner pictures, check out http://joangood.com/garnets.htm that is a crazy NOLA lady I used to work for Pretty much her entire site is done on a $80 flatbed scanner.

As for the photo thing...ugg...If I have to take a photo, I just take a million of them and then load em all up on the PC and check em out. If you have the adobe set up, adobe bridge is awesome to look at a lot of pictures at once and photoshop has so many tools it will take you years to try them all, but it isn't to hard to get in and fiddle a bit with the color pallet to clean up your pictures. There is definitely no logic to what seems to work, more light, less light, real light, natural light, far away, close...try em all digital film is quite cheep With the flash you will get more washout the closer you are too...think of the flash as adjusting your brightness and the ambient light adjusting your contrast. The 'more' (ie closer) the flash, the more white light you are going to get. The lighter your ambient light is, the faster the camera 'snaps' and the lower the contrast will seem. Background colors are key too...usually opposite colors work well but sometimes the reflections make them distort the piece color. If you are a good geek and keep a log of your work, just add an entry in there on best photo conditions you found for that color too. If I alter a pic to get a more true color, I always make sure and tell the person that the photo has been retouched to try and represent the colors better. Remember too that every persons monitor is a bit different so a pic that matches the piece perfectly on your screen may not on mine.

Also remember what you are mirroring in your piece! I am reminded of a lovely stainless steel teapot on sale on ebay with a reflection in it of the naked poster taking the picture :O

[CumberlandCowboy]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

I've tried all suggestions and a few of my own........still no luck. It looks like I'm gonna impose on a photographer buddy of mine and grab a six pack and my parts and head over there sometime soon. This mic turned out so well, I'm gonna keep it for myself......

Thanks for all the suggestions...........if you can think of anything else, let me know.

Jeff

[Guest]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

Oh doooood I didn't even realize who you were...I saw some of your work in that big what you been shooting thread...those mics are just amazing man. Do you use them? or is it just a collection? I have a lot of taper buddies that record live music. Those old mics are so cool.

[Guest]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

[quote="nolatodd"]pictures suck so much. It seems so simple too, I mean I can see it, why the hell can't my camera. A trick I learned, and it will only work on smaller things, is to scan them. Drop the piece on your flat bed scanner...cover it up with the lid if it is flat, or a sheet or towel or something if not, and scan that sucker. It has to be totally dark in there but you can get some really good colors like that.

The way a scanner takes the picture, the light is always straight at the piece, so reflections don't get picked up like they do w a camera. You can pull out some really nice colors that you can't see at all with a normal camera. If you really wanted to be a geek...you could probably make yourself a box that could use the same technology...just bust up a wide bed scanner and mount the works on top of a large box you can seal the light out of. There is a magazine called Make that had an article about a year ago on making a camera from a scanner...same basic idea. If you want to see some examples of scanner pictures, check out http://joangood.com/garnets.htm that is a crazy NOLA lady I used to work for Pretty much her entire site is done on a $80 flatbed scanner.

Not Cool sending a Woman to jewelry site You shall be punished

[Guest]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

hahaha oh man if you like the old style stuff shes got some really beautiful stuff. Tell her Todd her old web guy sent you and she might give you a deal

[CumberlandCowboy]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

Yea, I do use them. They are vintage microphone shells from verious era's......the black one in the middle is from the late 30's-early 40's.......the other 2 are from the 50's. They're made for harmonica players..............I play a little, but my love is building them. It's not my day job..........by trade I build custom harmonica cases. I got into building the mics by accident and just fell in love with doing them. I used to send the shells out all over the country to different custom paint shops. It was very time consuming and VERY expensive.........that's where PC'ing came in.........LOVE IT.......

Thanks for the kind words.........I just started about 6 weeks ago with PC'ing.......I'm learning alot. I've got a long way to go to get it the way I want it. The most frustrating part is that they are made from pot metal and outgassing is challanging.....on some folks recommendation here on the forum, I started using KL primer for a base to all of them.........it's really helping, still not perfect, but WAY better...

Jeff

[Guest]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

haha talk about a niche, you stepped way out of the box (pardon the pun!) and for your hobby you work on the mics?!

Those things are really cool. I would think you would find quite a market in your niche. Musicians like 'special' things. The 'yea...I had this hand made just for me' factor is huge and harmonica players are already working on a deficit since all of the guitar players get first choice of the women right?

[CumberlandCowboy]

Re: Taking pics of Translucent Candy colors

Very true...........not to mention you're alway battling the guitar player for volume.......

The cases were a complete accident also.........it was just something that was near what I did for a living and it kinda snowballed into my full-time gig.

Jeff