Re: [neonixie-l] Photographing VFDs...

[Bob Coggeshall]

-Set your display as dim as possible and still remain 'attractive' (which
will be different to the camera than to the eye)
-Get some lights on dimmers. At least two to eliminate shadows. I use 75W
halogen par 30s on individual dimmers.
-Set your your shutter speed to < your display's refresh speed to eliminate
flicker (if you are muxing).
-Set your ISO and fstop for max depth of field vs. acceptable grain vs the
required shutter speed.
-You will probably find yourself shooting way less than 1/30th sec, so a
tripod is a must.
-Use a remote trigger to eliminate vibration.
-You'll need to experiment around with ambient light vs. your display's
light.
-Yes, use bracketing and HDR software if you have them available to you.

On Tue, Oct 25, 2011 at 2:06 PM, Adam Jacobs  wrote:

> Have you considered taking the shot in HDR? Might make the  whole thing a
> lot simpler.
> take a 3 shot bracket (-2,0,+2) and see what you come up with in
> photomatix. I know it's cheating, but I think you're just looking for
> results. I always do my HDR work with a $30 A560 powershot.
>
> Otherwise, David is absolutely correct. First figure out the exposure for
> the glowing component, then "make" the lighting for the rest of the room
> correct. You can try pointing desklamps via homemade reflectors or whatever
> you can rig up yourself. It doesn't have to be studio quality strobes.
> Alternately, you can try taking the problem outside. If I don't have a
> studio full of lighting equipment, I'll wait until the lighting is good
> outdoors and take the subject (or model) outside. This reduces your
> equipment needs down to just key lighting. In the case of a VFD/nixie you
> won't want any key lighting.
>
> Have you tried making a homemade lightbox? That might be an option too,
> depending on exactly what you are photographing and the final image you are
> trying to create.
>
> -Adam AJ9D
>
> On 10/25/2011 10:59 AM, David Forbes wrote:
>
>> On 10/25/11 10:24 AM, Nick wrote:
>>
>>> I'm trying to get good, consistent, photographs of a VFD display
>>> (single tube) and have having trouble with getting the colours right&
>>> decent detail - this is when the tube is lit (all segments).
>>>
>>> Anyone done this with good success and care to share settings/
>>> technique etc.?
>>>
>>> Nick
>>>
>>>
>> Nick,
>>
>> I just spent some large amount of time with professional photographers
>> working with both my Nixie watch and my LED video coat. They took hours and
>> hundreds of pictures to get a couple good shots. I watched their methods.
>>
>> The tube display elements tend to be a lot brighter than the camera's
>> exposure sensor expects, so you have to use manual exposure setting and dial
>> it a couple F-stops darker than the meter thinks is correct. Take test
>> photos and adjust as needed until you're happy with the result.
>>
>> Once you get the glowing parts correct, then you can start to work on the
>> background lighting. If you're using manual camera settings, then the
>> background light changes shouldn't affect the glowing bits' exposure.
>>
>> Diffused lighting is very helpful to get the background right. That can be
>> hard to achieve indoors, but it's possible with several lights pointed at
>> the light-colored room walls and ceiling. Direct lighting is usually
>> unhelpful. The guy who took photos for PopSci used a light on each side and
>> one above me, but he had expensive lights with very tight beam control.
>>
>> As far as the color goes, blue-green is the most difficult to get right
>> due to the extremely nonlinear color response of the human eyeball and the
>> nature of RGB color sensors used in cameras. You'll have to take several
>> photos with different white balance settings and see which comes out looking
>> the best. And there's always post-production software (Photoshop).
>>
>>
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Re: [neonixie-l] Photographing VFDs...

[Adam Jacobs]

Have you considered taking the shot in HDR? Might make the  whole thing 
a lot simpler.
take a 3 shot bracket (-2,0,+2) and see what you come up with in 
photomatix. I know it's cheating, but I think you're just looking for 
results. I always do my HDR work with a $30 A560 powershot.


Otherwise, David is absolutely correct. First figure out the exposure 
for the glowing component, then "make" the lighting for the rest of the 
room correct. You can try pointing desklamps via homemade reflectors or 
whatever you can rig up yourself. It doesn't have to be studio quality 
strobes.
Alternately, you can try taking the problem outside. If I don't have a 
studio full of lighting equipment, I'll wait until the lighting is good 
outdoors and take the subject (or model) outside. This reduces your 
equipment needs down to just key lighting. In the case of a VFD/nixie 
you won't want any key lighting.


Have you tried making a homemade lightbox? That might be an option too, 
depending on exactly what you are photographing and the final image you 
are trying to create.


-Adam AJ9D

On 10/25/2011 10:59 AM, David Forbes wrote:

On 10/25/11 10:24 AM, Nick wrote:

I'm trying to get good, consistent, photographs of a VFD display
(single tube) and have having trouble with getting the colours right&
decent detail - this is when the tube is lit (all segments).

Anyone done this with good success and care to share settings/
technique etc.?

Nick



Nick,

I just spent some large amount of time with professional photographers 
working with both my Nixie watch and my LED video coat. They took 
hours and hundreds of pictures to get a couple good shots. I watched 
their methods.


The tube display elements tend to be a lot brighter than the camera's 
exposure sensor expects, so you have to use manual exposure setting 
and dial it a couple F-stops darker than the meter thinks is correct. 
Take test photos and adjust as needed until you're happy with the result.


Once you get the glowing parts correct, then you can start to work on 
the background lighting. If you're using manual camera settings, then 
the background light changes shouldn't affect the glowing bits' exposure.


Diffused lighting is very helpful to get the background right. That 
can be hard to achieve indoors, but it's possible with several lights 
pointed at the light-colored room walls and ceiling. Direct lighting 
is usually unhelpful. The guy who took photos for PopSci used a light 
on each side and one above me, but he had expensive lights with very 
tight beam control.


As far as the color goes, blue-green is the most difficult to get 
right due to the extremely nonlinear color response of the human 
eyeball and the nature of RGB color sensors used in cameras. You'll 
have to take several photos with different white balance settings and 
see which comes out looking the best. And there's always 
post-production software (Photoshop).




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Re: [neonixie-l] Photographing VFDs...

[John Rehwinkel]

> I'm trying to get good, consistent, photographs of a VFD display
> (single tube) and have having trouble with getting the colours right &
> decent detail - this is when the tube is lit (all segments).
> 
> Anyone done this with good success and care to share settings/
> technique etc.?

I've had reasonable success with two approaches.

One approach is for when you want to show the actual device and its structure, 
so you want it
well lit.  For that, I use an off-camera flash, and adjust power and distance 
for a nice balance
between the external light and the light of the VFD itself.  I also juggle 
angles so highlights aren't
in unfortunate places, covering up details I want to capture.  One trick here 
is to put a polarizer on
your flash and another on your lense, so you can filter out flash bounce more 
easily.

With the external light giving your camera white balance cues, the colors tend 
to come out nicely.

A more tricky situation is when the majority of the light is coming from the 
VFD itself.  Then, you
have to avoid having the camera guess the white balance, as the light is not 
white.  One thing that
works with some cameras is to turn on external light of appropriate brightness, 
let your camera
choose focus, exposure, white balance, etc. (often done by half-pressing the 
shutter button), then
turn off the lights and take the picture.  It might come out a little dark, but 
that can be addressed by
adjusting your exposure choices.

Since you may not be working with fast lenses or bright devices, a tripod or 
some method of supporting
the camera can be helpful (I often set it on something and use the timer to 
take the picture, so the vibration
of me pushing the button will have dissipated by the time the shutter opens).

Adding a color filter in front of the lense can help too, and also increase 
contrast.

Finally, you'll often get the best results if you tweak the photo afterward and 
adjust the hue and
saturation to get a more realistic depiction of what you're looking at.  
Odd-spectrum light sources
(such as VFDs) can confuse your camera, which has to work backwards from a 
Bayer array of
colour sensors to deduce the actual colour.  As the filters in the camera have 
different sensitivity
curves from the ones in your eye, the math used makes some assumptions that the 
spectrum is
more or less smooth and continuous - which is not true in these cases, causing 
the camera to
assign the wrong colours.  Since this is a basic problem of physics, it's tough 
to avoid in any
automatic way.  Which is why tweaking things after the fact is often the best 
approach.

I had a time trying to take a picture of an old, faded VFD, which showed the 
darker areas of the phosphor
under the filament wires.  Catching the filament wires brightly enough to see, 
without making the glowing
phosphor too bright, was tricky!

Verbosely yours,
John

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Re: [neonixie-l] Photographing VFDs...

[David Forbes]

On 10/25/11 10:24 AM, Nick wrote:

I'm trying to get good, consistent, photographs of a VFD display
(single tube) and have having trouble with getting the colours right&
decent detail - this is when the tube is lit (all segments).

Anyone done this with good success and care to share settings/
technique etc.?

Nick



Nick,

I just spent some large amount of time with professional photographers 
working with both my Nixie watch and my LED video coat. They took hours 
and hundreds of pictures to get a couple good shots. I watched their 
methods.


The tube display elements tend to be a lot brighter than the camera's 
exposure sensor expects, so you have to use manual exposure setting and 
dial it a couple F-stops darker than the meter thinks is correct. Take 
test photos and adjust as needed until you're happy with the result.


Once you get the glowing parts correct, then you can start to work on 
the background lighting. If you're using manual camera settings, then 
the background light changes shouldn't affect the glowing bits' exposure.


Diffused lighting is very helpful to get the background right. That can 
be hard to achieve indoors, but it's possible with several lights 
pointed at the light-colored room walls and ceiling. Direct lighting is 
usually unhelpful. The guy who took photos for PopSci used a light on 
each side and one above me, but he had expensive lights with very tight 
beam control.


As far as the color goes, blue-green is the most difficult to get right 
due to the extremely nonlinear color response of the human eyeball and 
the nature of RGB color sensors used in cameras. You'll have to take 
several photos with different white balance settings and see which comes 
out looking the best. And there's always post-production software 
(Photoshop).


--
David Forbes, Tucson AZ

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