Saxophone photo - any advice for improvement

[clarnibass]

Hi

I'd appreciate any advice on how to improve my instrument photos.

I now started taking these in RAW and choosing White Balance in software, which works better. I have DPP (what I use) but can't and won't have any software like Photoshop, Lightroom, or anything else that isn't free. I don't have any lights to use other than the natural light from my porch. This is the direction of the sunrise. Photos of shooting area showing stronger noon light but I shoot at softer morning or evening light usually (no shadows from the rail, etc.). I haven't tried shooting length-wise in the porch, only as showed, so that might work better (but more hassle to set up). Someone suggested a sort of light tent (especially to create less reflections) but I don't really have the space for that (I use a very small one for small instrument parts). I would like to be able to get all the sides completely white like the left side so there's no sharp transition and visible background like on the right side.

Thanks for any advice!

 

[The_Traveler]

I think, but may be incorrect that,
If you look at the current, quite nice image, the lower 2/3 of the sax looks perfect while the upper part has some perspective distortion as if you were looking up at a tall building.
If you can, get further away, and position the camera so the axis of light through the lens is perpendicular to the sax and midway up the body, and use a longer focal length, attempting to minimize the perspective distortion.

What are you using this for?

 

[clarnibass]

Thanks.

I think you're right, but also, part of that is because of some tiny dents in the sax in that area. But yes, I think the sax was angled a bit too much to the camera with the top being further away. I will try to make sure it is more perpendicular. I'm not sure but it might also be that the top was close to the end of the DOF so it's not as sharp there. I don't remember about the shot I eventually chose but it's likely that it was manual focus or correction with manual focus after pressing half way.

I would like to be able to have the smooth white transition on all sides, unlike now that the end of the photo on the right is very noticable. I'm wondering if it's possible to do that without any more lights and not making exposure even higher? I don't think DPP can do anything about it (no Photoshop or Lightroom).

The use is my website. I'm a musician and woodwind instrument repairer and I have a website with reviews, advice for woodwind players, etc. It's basically a non-profit website in that the instruments reviewed are not for sale and there are no links to buying them or anything. As a "side effect" the website is a bit of an advertisement but in reality almost everyone here use repairers by word of mouth recommendation and only rarely search online (unles other countries where searching online is the first thing to do). Also, it is not professional photography i.e. I never intend to sell the photos or photo instruments or any products for anyone for pay. It's just a side hobby I have. Which is why I'm limiting my investment in it... music and instruments always get much higher priority...

Thanks again.

 

[The_Traveler]

You can use dofmaster.com to calculate the DOF available to you, which at your approximate shooting distance and f stop is about 4 feet.

With clean-edged photos like this, it is easy to extract the instrument from the background and slide a new background in - a picture of your choice, perhaps scenics that you take.

You could download Gimpshow free or, if this is an occasional thing, I could do it for you on a high res image.

or even with a drop shadow to pop it out of the image.

 

[clarnibass]

You can use dofmaster.com to calculate the DOF available to you, which at your approximate shooting distance and f stop is about 4 feet.

With clean-edged photos like this, it is easy to extract the instrument from the background and slide a new background in - a picture of your choice, perhaps scenics that you take.

You could download Gimpshow free or, if this is an occasional thing, I could do it for you on a high res image.

Thanks.

I used Online Depth of Field Calculator to calculate DOF and seems it was about 40cm. The position of the camera in the example photos is actually not correct, I positioned it approx again just to show after I already moved eveything away. It still could have been enough but I think it's possible I put the sax at the end of DOF, I think I used manual focus after the auto focus. I can't remember.

I'm not interested in putting the photo on a different background. If possible with the software I would like to have the background completely white and then sort of merging/fading it with the creme (sort of white with a bit of yellow/brown maybe) colour of my website i.e. a gradual change from the instrument white background to the website background. For example see here (before I used the white background) Nitai Levi - Selmer Reference 36 tenor saxophone.....ניתאי לוי - סקסופון טנור סלמר רפרנ&

I've tried Gimp before and remember not liking it so much but I will try again!
But maybe as an example you can put the sax with completely the creme colour background of my website so I can see how it looks like vs. thw white fading into the background smoothdly (if the the latter is possible)?

Thanks again.

 

[The_Traveler]

The main problem with extracting this is the shadows inside the curve of the instrument and inside every small protrusion. These can be minimized by having the sax away from the background. The second problem is the reflection of the white on the instrument. I don't know how you would minimize that except with instrument colored panels.

This is a reasonable result. The larger the original image, the better the result. (please ignore the terrible over saturation of the colors on the instrument - that was an error on my part and I don't have the 30 minutes to go back to beginning on that)

The other alternative, fading white to web color is easy but not as attractive.

 

[clarnibass]

Thanks very much!

I really like the first. The second example doesn't look good here but I think would still be good on my website where the background is the cremy colour, unlike here. However what I actually meant was the instrument background would still be a white rectangle, then it would "fade" against the website background colour which would essentially be a frame. Same as the second example except the white wouldn't be around the instrument exactly, but just a rectangle background (I hope it's clear?). I thought of that because I assumed it would be less work than your first example, no? How long did the first example take you? Is there an online source to show how to do that with Gimp or another free software? Do you have any link for that? Ot should I just search around the software and try?

Thanks very much for all your help!

 

[The_Traveler]

On your website, everything would be much smaller obviously and the defects - small shadows, reflections, etc. - wouldn't show.
The first one took me about 30 minutes (but I am pretty good at PS)
The second about 30 seconds, max.

Rather than just a white rectangle, use a small border that is the same hue but darker. It is classic, simple, elegant and very fast and easy - and needs virtually no knowledge or technique.
My guess is any software will do it.

 

[The_Traveler]

Or stroke (border) and a drop shadow - againn supremely easy and fast.

 

[The_Traveler]

BTW, I was amazed how grammatically and syntactically well Google translated from Hebrew to English. I understand that Hebrew is a rather simple language structurally and this must make the translation easier.

 

[clarnibass]

Thanks again, for all your help!

The reason the photos on my website are much smaller now is that I couldn't get nice big ones with my previous cheap P&S camera. I intend to have slightly bigger photos now, though not as big as the one I posted here. Though there are some exceptions where clicking the photos opens them in a big size in a new window. I'm considering allowing that in more photos, probably a different version with only white background.

I don't like the sharp frame. I would prefer the completely cut into the creme colour background (more work) or alternatively similar to the sharp rectangle frame but with smooth fade between the colours (less work I assume). I don't have Photoshop but I should be able to do all of that with Gimp, right?

As far as Hebrew, actually IMO it is much more complicated than English. For example we don't have "is" or "are" and verbs change depensing on male/female, single/plural, past/present/future and sometimes other things too. I looked at the Google translation of my website and although you can understand a lot, it is pretty funny

 

[The_Traveler]

There is Gimpshop which is Gimp with a nice interface.
I've never tried it but I'm certain you can do all that you are looking for.

Good luck.

Lew