Glass Art Forums » Glass Art Photography

**Few tips from a semi-pro** Posted: 1/11/2006 4:42:47 AM

#1 - Digital rocks because of white balance. If you shoot film, you have to get color matched lights, strobes, or shoot daylight film outside with the potential blue cast on cloudy days or amber cast if the sun is setting. - Big art show juries will nix all your work if the color-balance is off.

#2 - Shoot in manual setting and with a tripod (true whether film or digital). Set the F-stop to the highest number or at least 5.6, that way the depth of field will cause the whole subject to be sharply in focus.

#3 - In order to avoid any camera shake due to the longer exposure (low # on the shutter speed setting) of shooting when stopped down to F8 or more, set your camera on "timer" as if you were running into the shot to take your own self portrait. This will allow the camera to be absolutely still when the shutter trips, as opposed to when you are tripping it manually (holding the camera with caffeinated hands will mess you up every time).

#4 - immediately review each image on your LCD screen, and then hit the zoom button to zoom into each image each time to make sure its in focus, and without camera shake.

#5 - Find a local digital photo lab that will convert digital image files to slides. This is WELL worth the cost, because high-resolution digital pics are often superior to pics from slides, unless you own a professional studio with sync'd, color-balanced strobes on trees and snoots (NOT on camera).

#6 - obviously NEVER use a flash (on the camera), however, you CAN get cool results from a six foot flash sync cord, holding the flash unit over or to the side of your subject.

I use a 1000 watt halogen stage spotlight on all my photography and get by with 1/8" and 1/4" white Sintra® as my backdrop, which is a wonderful flexible white plastic sheet. White or grey formica works well too. Black velvet is nice at times. Just rambling on . . .

http://www.johnblazydes...ges/Temple-base-web.JPG

Glass Art Forums » Glass Art Photography

Few tips from a semi-pro

Post Reply to: Few tips from a semi-pro