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Nuther thing is to adjust for white balance to give accurate color, if your camera has that feature. Many do in manual mode, not just the high-end ones.

Light sources have varied casts - sun is white, incandescents and halogen work lights are reddish and flourescents are green IIRC. Cameras try to correct for this using an "automatic" mode, but they're not always accurate (how do they know what color the light is?). You can get everything set up, lighting, and all, and use the white balance menu in your camera. You essentially hold up something that's white to fill the screen -- I use printer paper -- and calibrate. You're sort saying, "OK, camera, THIS is white." It then adjusts any lighting cast so that your test subject actually comes out white. Also it's best to have only one type/color of light source in the room (unless you're using flash) so's not to have white in one part of the shot with some green from shop flourescents sneaking in. Balancing this out really helps if you're bouncing off a ceiling or something that's not dead white.

OK, I'll stop now.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Also, flash is white.

Wikipedia has an article article on this.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Lance, Frank Ford has a great pictorial on frets.com. You can check it out here.

It seems a little more elaborate, but you might get a few good ideas. I know I have! Thanks Mr. Ford (again!)

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I'd like to be able to prove, just for once, that money wouldn't make me happy...

[QUOTE=burbank] Nuther thing is to adjust for white balance to give accurate color, if your camera has that feature. Many do in manual mode, not just the high-end ones.

Light sources have varied casts - sun is white, incandescents and halogen work lights are reddish and flourescents are green IIRC. Cameras try to correct for this using an "automatic" mode, but they're not always accurate (how do they know what color the light is?). You can get everything set up, lighting, and all, and use the white balance menu in your camera. You essentially hold up something that's white to fill the screen -- I use printer paper -- and calibrate. You're sort saying, "OK, camera, THIS is white." It then adjusts any lighting cast so that your test subject actually comes out white. Also it's best to have only one type/color of light source in the room (unless you're using flash) so's not to have white in one part of the shot with some green from shop flourescents sneaking in. Balancing this out really helps if you're bouncing off a ceiling or something that's not dead white.

OK, I'll stop now. [/QUOTE]
Hi Lance,
I know you said you're looking for specific information from a couple of Johns that you like their photo work, but I can't help myself...

I have 2 professional softboxes with halogens, and yes, they do a nice job. However, they are hotter than Beelzebub's Bar-B-Que. Once I get a new part for one of them, they are going on Ebay and I'll say goodbye forever to halogens for photography. Next, I'll go with high Kelvin color temperature compact fluorescents. It is true that there's no free lunch, and these high color temperature (5000K to 10000K) bulbs are very hot compared to standard 4' fluorescent tubes - but not nearly as hot as halogens. And, the halogens use up about six times the electricity! Or another way of saying it is that an 85watt compact fluorescent puts out as much light (lumens) as a 500watt incandescent or halogen.

With so many people getting into selling in online auctions, the photographic lighting suppliers have responded. Probably the best no-fuss soft lighting a luthier could get would be a light tent with several 85 to 105watt compact fluorescents outside of the tent. That would give you great SOFT light, which will show more details with less glare than flash, or strobes (without softboxes) or direct or reflected halogens.

Burbank gives some excellent advice about NOT mixing colors of light in one shot, and you can (either in the camera or afterwords in the digital darkroom) color balance the light.

FWIW,

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Sorry Lance I did not see this sooner, but here goes with my humble opinion.

I bought a couple yellow umbrella's and I think it is too much yellow. I would go with a light tan or whiter color. It is not that easy to find umbrella's in the colors you might want so keep an eye out. You can adjust the intesity by moving them further away or turning them in different directions. Just keep experimenting until you get the shot you want. It's really not that hard.

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

Thanks Dennis!
What is a light tent?

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Here's a quick link I just found, though this particular tent is not quite big enough:

Light Tent

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

Lance, I just purchased a light tent. You'll find lots of them on ebay but it's really hard to find one big enough for guitars.
Originally I build one. 5'x5'x5' cube out of 1" pvc pipe. Then draped the entire thing in white sheets, including the floor. The object is put in the tent and the lights are outside so that they get difused when shining through the fabric (same effect as a soft box). It worked pretty well but I couldn't get enough light into the tent.
So I bought two heads that hold 4 5000 degree flourescent bulbs each. I'll be doing some shooting tomorrow so I'll post pics when I get done.
The hardest thing I've ever shot is that black archtop. It's next to impossible to get reflections out of it. I got it back from the client for a couple of days so I'll give that a try again.

Paul, I noticed the same thing in the little bit of searching I have done (I'm not ready to buy yet, so my searches are incomplete.) Most of the tents are too small for a guitar. I would think they would be fine for anything but a "full Monty" shot; for that I'd think about a five foot high tent would be good.

Interesting that you did not get enough light in... I wonder if the sheets reflect too much, and let too little light in? I'd think some gauzy (is that a word) fabric might work well for a homemade light tent - something extremely lightweight/flimsy that would just break up the light without stopping or reflecting it.

Here is a guy that sells larger light tent units on Ebay:
60x60x60 light tent

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

[QUOTE=DennisLeahy] ....Interesting that you did not get enough light in... I wonder if the sheets reflect too much, and let too little light in? I'd think some gauzy (is that a word) fabric might work well for a homemade light tent - something extremely lightweight/flimsy that would just break up the light without stopping or reflecting it.....

Dennis[/QUOTE]

Good point. Softboxes are made with material that lets a regulated amount of light in. Lightweight nylon-type shower curtains work pretty good as a cheaper alternative to a large softbox, stretched over a pvc frame.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Woah woah, careful guys. Soft-boxes and light tents are made out of
filter fabric that not only lets light through, but withstands the
temperatures.

When I worked in the media arts dept. at school, we used lee filter fabric.
It comes in wide by seriously long sheets for about $100. I found a
source online. One roll for you all to share would make many light tents
that could handle a full guitar...or soft-boxes, but you'd need to make a
frame and mount it to your light somehow. The tension needs to be
pretty high to stretch the fabric out evenly, so it's worth it just to buy
some ready made soft-boxes if you want to go that route.

http://www.ltt-versand.de/shop/white-diffusion-p-502113.html ?
currency=USD

Your basic shadowless product photography is done with light tents. The
problem is, you won't have the option to use different colored
backgrounds unless you figure out a way to hang them from within a
tent.

Thinking about it, if you can find a way to make a strong frame, I bet you
could use a canvas stretcher to stretch the fabric out, and fasten it in a
way so that it won't tear off. Find a way to put your little windows in front
of your light, and there you go.

Well, here is the result of the morning.
The guitar itself is unmanipulated. I just dropped out the white background and replaced it with this grey one. Gloss black is the hardest thing to shoot so I'm feeling pretty optimistic about shooting other guitars.

That's flippin sweet Paul!

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com

Filippo, thanks for the observations. Yes, it's definately high gloss. If was photographed in a tent so all the light was difused. If I tried to shoot it with just lights, no matter how much I bounced them, all you can see is nasty reflections of lights. I realize this doesn't really show the high gloss of the guitar but you can at least tell it IS a guitar.
I'm not seeing the shadow under the pickguard that you are referring to.
Yes, the grain is from saving it down small enough for web posting.
I'll gladly accept any tips you, or anyone, has to offer.

Paul,

I have some expertise in resizing digital images and reducing compression artifacts. Why don't you send me an original file and I will do my thing and send it back to you. If you agree that my technique is an improvement, I will write up a detailed tutorial for everyone's digestion.

PM me for my e-mail. Steve

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"Building guitars looks hard, but it's actually much harder than it looks." Tom Buck

My routine is pretty simple.

Unsharp mask in photoshop, between 100% and 200% depending on the
look you want; radius set to .5 pixels; threshold set to 7.

Then I use save for web with the level 70.