How Do You Photograph Belts And Guitar Straps?

[UKRay]

I must have taken hundreds of pictures of belts and guitar straps but I'm never happy with the results. Can anyone make any suggestions as to the best way to photograph long thin strappy things?

Thanks,

Ray

[rdb]

Use sexy models, hire someone who knows how to photograph....ROFL

Seriously, don't ask me, I can take 60 pictures of the same thing, and still come up with bupkiss. My daughter can take one shot, and it looks like it's ready for an art museum. I'm looking forward to the responses here, as long as it doesn't involve buying one of them $1000 cameras, or a brain transplant.

[MarkB]

[CitizenKate]

It seems to work best for me if I place long strappy things in a loop. A part of it will get hidden by this arrangement, but if what is hidden is the same as what appears in the parts that show, I don't worry about alternate views. If the hidden part does have something unique to the part that shows in the main view, I make alternate views.

Can you show us an example or two of the ones you've done?

Kate

[UKRay]

Here are some pics of my low end guitar straps and a few belts. As you say, Kate, there doesn't seem much else I can do with 'em.

I have been forced to just show the buckle ends of the belts.

Ray

[CitizenKate]

The biggest issue in these photos are glare and lighting/exposure. There needs to be plenty of light on the subject, and the exposure of your camera needs to be set so that all of the subject is light enough to see all the color and detail.

Often, the "auto" exposure features of your camera will not choose the right exposure for the subject if there is a lot of back-lighting from the background. This gives you a photo that is underexposed.

To get rid of the glare, change the angle of the lighting and/or the position of the strap so the light's "hot spot" doesn't bounce off the subject straight back to the camera. It also helps reduce glare if you have a way of diffusing the light from your light source. A soft box (or "light box") is a good solution for that.

Kate

[Suze]

outside and daylight helps too.

also a more "Nutural" background - I found doing mini work that too much contrast is not good. and something "not shiny"

black is a very hard background color to work with.

and my shooting skills with a digital camera -- SUCK

[amuckart]

Hi Ray,

Here are some pics of my low end guitar straps and a few belts. As you say, Kate, there doesn't seem much else I can do with 'em.

I have been forced to just show the buckle ends of the belts.

Ray

There are four things you need. A decent camera, a decent tripod, a light box, and good software. Almost any modern digital camera will do the job, but you want one with a "programmed autofocus" mode. That allows you better control over flash and exposure without requiring fully manual mode that you only tend to get on high-end cameras. You won't get decent shots in this kind of situation with fully automatic mode. You don't need a cable release or remote, just set the camera to 2 second self-timer so you're not touching it and causing shake when you take the picture. The beauty of using a digital camera for this is that you can take a hundred shots of something and pick the one or two that work.

You don't need a hugely expensive high-end tripod, but don't waste time with cheap flimsy things. The one I have is a decent portable tripod but it isn't stable enough to do long exposures without shaking, even when I'm not touching the camera. You want to avoid using the builtin flash, so your exposure times are going to be longer. If you can get a tripod that allows the camera to be mounted underneath pointing down you'll find that useful for this kind of work.

You can build a light box quite easily. Google has lots of info on them. I made mine out of a 60lt plastic wheelie-crate that I store the paper and lights in when I'm not using it. It's not perfect, but it works pretty well. The major thing is to use 1550nm 'daylight' bulbs in the lights and to play around with the white balance of the pictures. Having a white card somewhere in shot you can crop out later is useful.

Google's picasa app is a good free application for correcting white balance and doing basic edits. You don't need photoshop for basic product photos

Here's the light box I use:

The major thing I want to change is to make it so I can take photos looking straight down into the box. It's a lot easier to get the object set up in a box like that.

Here are some pictures from it. I'm still getting too-bright highlights on some parts, but it still works a lot better than I could do otherwise.

I keep some matte finish light card stock loosely rolled up in the box to use as backgrounds. You can also use fabric or felt. The key is not to use anything shiny and to have it be a smooth curve from the top-rear corner of the box to the front-bottom corner of the box so there aren't any sharp corners in the background of the shot.

If you want any more info, please ask. I'm not an expert on these but I've managed to make it work Ok.

[UKRay]

Thanks for the advice folks - It might help if I tell you the camera kit I own:

Digital Cameras : Canon Ixus 980 IS and Canon Ixus 500 neither seem to work well as manual cameras - and I probably wouldn't know how to operate them anyway!

I have a light tent (the 3ft square collapsible kind) but obviously I have never sorted out how to use it properly.

I have two daylight bulbs in anglepoise style lamps in the workroom that were purchased to use with the light tent.

I have a Benbo Trekker tripod.

I don't have any spare money for kit so I'll probably have to do the best I can with the stuff I already have.

Ray

[amuckart]

Hi Ray,

Sorry if I'm telling you stuff you already know. It's difficult to figure out what someone else knows about stuff just from the forum, but if I'm teaching you to suck eggs as they say over here, at least this might be useful to other readers.

That kit should be all good. You might need another lamp if you want to avoid shadows. I found with two I couldn't quite get things well lit enough. The ixus 980 is a good camera, and it had a Program AE mode which is good.

The biggest thing you'll want to do is turn the camera flash off and set it to the lowest ISO setting it'll do (80 or 100, no higher than 200). If you have issues with depth of field, set the camera to aperture priority mode and crank it down to f2.8 or so. From the photos you sent before it looks like either you have the flash on or you're lighting the belts from the same direction as the camera, which means you'll get bad reflections and bright spots on the shiny bits. You want to light the subject with indirect light bounced off the inside of the light box or at least filtered through a diffuser.

These articles are ones I've found useful. Obviously you've already got a light tent so you don't need to build one, but the comments and notes on use are still good:

http://www.studiolighting.net/homemade-light-box-for-product-photography/

http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-a-inexpensive-light-tent

http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber/light_box_light_tent

This might be useful if you're having issues with harsh flash highlights:

http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-soften-up-harsh-flash-lighting

http://digital-photography-school.com/how-to-make-a-diy-ring-flash-tutorial

This is a good setup too:

http://digital-photography-school.com/cooking-up-a-photograph-in-your-kitchen

Cheers.