Good Stuff Erik! Was going to do something like that but you beat me to
it... ;)
Nice work. Keep it up...
Regards,
Eric
On 1/26/2010 12:51 PM, Erik Fisler wrote:
I'd like to share some photography tips with list members that might help with
photographing your meteorites.
The first thing I would like to share is a silver reflector.
here are some pictures:
-
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/16/Photographing_a_model_1.jpg/260px-Photographing_a_model_1.jpg
- http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2673/3843207418_17bd3e73bf_m.jpg
Mainly used in portrait photography but works great for meteorites. It is used to reflect soft light onto the subject(meteorite). I use it to fill in the shadows because sunlight can make highlights and shadows harsh.
I have a 5-in-1 reflector made by promaster. They usually run about $35 because you are paying for 4 different reflectors and a diffusion screen.
The second thing is custom white balancing. Have you ever taking pictures in
the shade or inside and the picture came out way too yellow or too blue? This
is because the auto-white balance on your camera didn't do so well. Many
digital camera's(Most SLR's) have a custom white balance setting. Just simply
hold up a white sheet of paper in the light you will be shooting in and take a
picture of it. Then find custom white balance and select the picture you took
of the paper. Now when you shoot in that light the picture will be properly
white balanced. This is a life saver for Nikon shooters because Nikon has
terrible auto white balance.
The third thing is auto-blending. For those of you who have SLR's you will notice
that shooting at a higher F-stop like F1.8 or F2.8 is a lot sharper than shooting at
a lower F-stop like F22. The problem is, you might have to drop your F-stop to make
sure the whole meteorite is in focus. Fortunately, photoshop can take a batch of
photos, align them, and then blend the sharpest plains of focus into one picture. To
do this set your camera on a tripod and set it to Av(aperature mode) spin the wheel
to drop your F-stop to as low as you can get it. Some lenses only drop to F3.5 which
is still fine. Then switch your lens to manual focus. Focus until just the front
part of your meteorite is in focus and take a picture, then keep taking pictures as
you change the focus in small increments. You should end up with 5 to 10 pictures
with different parts of the meteorite in focus. Open photoshop and the go
File>Scripts>Load Files into Stack... Select all of the photos and be sure
to check the box that says "Attempt To Automatically Align Source Images. Select ok and let photoshop align the
images. Then go under the tab "Window" and make sure "Layers" has a check next to it. The layers box
should be on the right side of your screen. All the pictures will be listed under layers. Select them all. You can do this
by holding ctrl key and clicking each one or click the first, then holding shift as you click the last. Once they are all
selected go to the "Edit" tab and select "Autoblend layers" and choose to autblend them as a stack.
Once it is done blending you need to click "Save as" and save it as a Jpeg
because it will try to save it as something else. Then close out of the image in photo
shop, if it asks you if you want to save click NO. Then you can open up the jpeg version
you saved and edit it how you like (brightness/contrast etc..) or leave it as is.
Here is an example i made with only 5 pictures blended:
http://s38.photobucket.com/albums/e145/phxerik/?action=view¤t=blended.jpg
The fourth thing is highlight tone priority. You can enable this in your
custom functions for canon shooters. I know Nikon has the setting but I don't
know what it's called.
This setting will make sure that your picture's highlights will not be blown
out. It also allows your processor to use all its bits. My camera's have
14bit processors but if Highlight tone priority is off the image only processes
at 10 bits. When i use HTP and get the full 14bits, this allows my picture to
smooth out the changes in light to dark in my photos. This makes everything
shaded better, especially clouds!
The fourth and last thing is HDR photography(High Dynamic Range). You do not
need a SLR to do this. Most point and shoot cameras can do this too! Sometimes
a picture can be too dark in one part and too light in another.
If you take one picture over exposed, one under exposed, and one properly exposed and blend them together it will allow all parts of your picture to be properly exposed.
Here is an example: http://www.flickr.com/photos/johnmueller/2158395487/
an here is the link on how to do it:
http://abduzeedo.com/how-create-hdr-photos-hdrphotomatix-tutorial
Enjoy!
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