Photography 101 Basics (Indoor Shots)

Natural filtered sun light in the back and one lamp in front. Selective focus on the front of the receiver and defocusing the background by using different aperture settings. Glass for reflection. Click image for larger image.

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“defocussing the background” in the photography realm, it’s referred to as bokeh!

Here are some ideas, observations, opinions.

I worked in commercial large format photography in the pre-digital age. Reading these posts forces me to face my obsolescence.

... along the way,,,, I did develop some habits that may help some avoid problems I see often that haven’t been addressed here yet.

1) try to keep unhelpful (especially direct) light from striking the lens, use a lens shade or carefully block the light with something opaque. This drastically reduces contrast and color saturation.

2) make sure your lens surface is surgically clean, anything on the lens will collect light and blur the image and direct light on this dirt will also reduce contrast and color saturation.

3) you can hand hold shots with a steady hand, this is more true than ever now with any current high end cell phone, like my iPhone X/max (or whatever it is called)

4) as already stated, invest a lot of time and effort toward cleaning and de-dusting your subject gear, and don’t be surprised if the success of a 5 minute “shot” pivots upon 4 hours of product preparation!

5) keep bright specular light from entering the lens, as this intense light will lower the exposure in compensation and the photo will be severely underexposed. If this reflected intense light can not be removed, then if possible, use an 18% grey card to set exposure values and bracket your shots with captures that incrementally over and underexpose to give you safe options after the shot is completed when they can be examined for correct highlight and shadow detail.

6) consider building a makeshift “tent” around the product table to evenly diffuse the light that will be aimed at the exterior of the white translucent tent, this will create a cocoon of even light around the entire image field to properly and evenly illuminate the product all within the constraints of the desired exposure range - look up the “Zone System”.

These images don’t really have to be museum quality to be amazing for this forum, I might not see any qualitative difference between a handheld shot taken with my iPhone even if compared to a properly executed digital transfer file made from an image captured on a sheet of 4”X5” Velvia 100 film from my Toyo 45 pro technical studio camera sitting on a Gitzo Tele-Studex Giant Rapid tripod, through the 240mm Schneider flat field color corrected copy lens. This is because the end product will be viewed on this website where the difference in silver process analog richness will be lost.
 
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