An answer to your Gun Photography Questions!

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
hporter,
I know what you mean about Adobe's yearly subscription !
Glad my old boss still pays for all this stuff! As long as I keep working, I'm one of 3 businesses in that huge building; So it helps pay the bills and keep the doors open!
The one bad thing about Photoshop is the learning curve! It is intimidating for most folks that haven't been using it for years.
I started with Photoshop 2.0 in 1987 ( before digital photography) We used to have our 4x5 transparency film "drum scanned" from an outside source ( that was expensive) This digitized it and we could bring it into a Mac computer and work on it in photoshop. When the file was ready we could hand it off to some of the larger printing companies that were starting to use digital files for plate making to print catalogs magazines etc.
 
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hporter

Active Member
Jim,

With apologies if I am going too far off the track of gun photography, I would also like to know a little about your DAM (Digital Asset Management) workflow.

I have well over 10,000 photographs and negative scans on my computer, and finding anything is a labor of love. For example, a fellow asked on a photo forum this week about mounting a hot shoe based flash trigger for his large format camera, and I knew I had a photo of my Wein trigger mounted with a clamp to the rails of one of my 8x10 cameras. But I couldn't find it. Luckily I remembered I had posted it years before on a previous thread on the forum and found it that way.

Being a commercial photographer, I am sure you have 100 times the quantities of scans or images than I do, and I would love to hear how you keep track of them and find them again?
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
Ok, Yes we have 100's of Thousands!
we recently donated all our negatives and slides and transparencies from our film days ( 1973 to 1996) to our Local Historical Society...we have been in business so long document People Families and Places The jumped at the chance to add them to their Collections!
From 1996 on until now all works was and is digital. These at first were stored on Kodak Gold plated CDs Then on to DVDs then onto massive hard drives for archiving. I found a great program that was mac based called CD Finder...It takes a few seconds to Log everything on a disk In it's data base! You can then go back in and add info to the cataloged images and annotate! It works just the same with Computers and Auxiliary drives!
The program has worked flawlessly all these years and all upgrades have been free after the initial purchase in 1996!
It is now called Neofinder! Same program Just a modernized name change
Check it out...I highly recommend it!
Neofinder
 

hporter

Active Member
Jim,

Thanks for the input. I had to laugh, because Neofinder is what I downloaded a couple of years ago to try out, and never proceeded farther than that. Before I saw your response, I downloaded the new 8.0 version and am creating a new catalog of my drive right now.

At least now I know I am on the right track!
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
You will like it! well worth the price and the free updates!
I also contacted Norm, The creator of the program to find out if there was a way to have a windows system read the "Mac database" He said the new windows version can read the mac Database directly! This is great because we are donating our entire digital data base and file to the Local Historical Society when I really retire in August of 2023 at 70 years old! This way they can take all my disks and drives archives and be able to find everythig in my digital data base!
 
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JWFilips

Well-Known Member
Getting back to photography:
As fiver mentioned a while back in the thread..... A white card can be use to bounce the light back into shadow areas... one of the "smoke and mirror" tricks of a smart photographer! Maybe sometimes you need to a a dark line or a gray line to a shiny metal part to show it's roundness... this can be achieved by reflecting a gray or black card into that area! Also you may have the gun light great but you would like to tone down a certain area of the stock that is too reflective or hazy...a black card can do the reverse of a white card instead of filling the shadows as with whit ...the black card can subtract light from an area!
One more thing in this bag of tricks is the "mirror" part! You may be familiar with those little round mirrors that stand on little wire stands and move up and down and are normal view on one side and magnified view on the other? This are great and in my studio I have about a dozen of them!
In a normal product lighting set you have your diffused fill light ( like a hazy sky) and a main source light that is slightly diffused ( Hazy sunlight)
With these little mirrors you can add additional and highlights anywhere you like by reflecting the main light at the opposing angle!
Very slick and magical to most people!
In the next installment I will tell you how moving the source lights in a diffusion panel changes the lighting
 

hporter

Active Member
Jim,

You might also want to discuss how to suspend the lights, or the backdrops or the light modifiers. It is very easy to do with light stands, but a little creativity is required if you do not own them.

For example, a couple of bar stools with a 2x2 or 2x4 across the top can suspend a sheet high enough to serve as the back drop when photographing a firearm propped up on the floor. A small step ladder with a clamp on work light with an cheap Walmart LED 5000k bulb can be positioned above, to the side or even as the back drop light. You can use blue painters tape to suspend a 2'x3' posterboard from a chair or a step stool to bounce light. Tin foil can work good to form barn doors or a snoot on a bare bulb, with the appropriate precautions with heat if you use incandescent bulbs.

Another thought that came to me, is that when I first started learning about lighting - diagrams like this one from Charles Abel's Professional Portrait Lighting (1947) were very helpful in conceptualizing lights, light modifiers, camera position and backdrop relationships.

Charles Abel Professional Portrait Lighting.JPG

Harold
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
Harold
You can tell that diagram was made during the B&W film era...The color combination of those lights would be a kiss of death for a person using color film!
Folks on this forum are very resourceful so I do not doubt that, given the building blocks of lighting and photography, they can gerri-rig a set up with what they have on hand! But I do appreciate the additional ideas that you an fiver have mentioned....Mother of invention starting ...that is good.
Jim
 

hporter

Active Member
Jim,

Yes, I purposely seek out the older portraiture books, because I prefer shooting B&W film and normally use incandescent or halogen lighting. I've been burning and developing B&W film for a good 35 years now, but I am just starting to dabble in C-41 color processing. Got to keep up with "modern" ways.

Thanks again for sharing your experience. Any man that can shoot chromes professionally has got my attention. Talk about having to get your exposures right on the money.
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
Ok Folks,
In this post I want to explain what you can do with Light diffusion panels and light sources. I prefer photo flood lamps in reflectors on stands
for someone starting out because the are the easiest to use and visualize the light effects you are getting those old Clamp on worklights in aluminum reflector dishes come to mind & the Bivens article uses similar types of lighting & resourceful folks can adapt what they have ..

Simplest diffusion panels can be made by stapling white muslin fabric to a wooden rectangular frame.
It should be tight and not have wrinkles.

If one were to set up the diffusion panel a few feet from the subject (I try to set them up as close as possible to the subject without them being in the shot) and set the reflector source light far enough behind the diffusion panel to just light the fabric evenly over all this would approximate north light "smooth even lighting" now if one were to move the light source closer to the fabric panel to just light a section....you have created lighting that is starting to have some "contrast " hazy sky / hazy sun....this happen because now there is a pronounced area of light in a section of the fabric that is brighter than the rest of the fabric (even though that additional area is still giving off light)!
The closer the light source comes to the fabric the higher the subject lighting... the farther away the light source from the fabric the softer the light...less contrast.
A good rule of light comes into play here:
The Inverse Square rule: If you have your light set up a a particular distance and have come up the a proper exposure.... Let's say the sources are at 2 feet away from the panels....if you move your lights 4ft away you have lost 4 times the light or 2 stops exposure (good exposure at f8 now you need f 4)!
Alternately, If your lights are at 2 feet distance and you move them to 1 foot distance the brightness increases by 4 times! or you have change you exposure by minus 2 stops (Good exposure at f 8 now F 16)
If you are using 2 light panels and photographing the rifle vertically On either side of the lens you have full control of totally lighting the rifle with many many options just by moving the reflector source lights relative the panels
 

JWFilips

Well-Known Member
I guess at this point I have loaded your heads with crazy nonsense and bored the crap out of most of you, so I don't know where to go with this!
I'm here if you want to ask questions..maybe the answers will help other folks as well.

I do want to mention, just hanging your light diffusion material winkles and all. Well this would be fine for a normal gun unless it is stainless.
On highly reflective surfaces need smooth and tight panels at least for firearms that have these reflective features like longrifle with brass patch boxes and shiny lock plates that will reflect wrinkles in fabric

Also an very easy form of photographic lighting is to bounce a bright light off the ceiling above the subject...."instant North Light"
Add another diffused light source from the side and you have an ideal "Hazy sky / hazy sun" lighting scenario