Photographing brass, primers, guns

28 December 2004, 10:49

What are some of the hints on getting good photographs of brass, primers, and guns?

28 December 2004, 12:33

denton

If you're lighting something, you can use things that are pretty much "point sources", like light bulbs or strobes. These cast deep, sharply defined shadows. Or you can use diffuse light. That comes from a broad source, like light striking a sheer curtain, or from bouncing a strobe off a photographer's umbrella. This allows better shadow detail, and does not produce sharp edges to shadows.

Felt works fine for a background, but it does have a tendency to pick up stuff.

Don't know if your camera has a "time" exposure feature, but one of the striking ways to do photos of guns is to go in a dark room, open the shutter, and "paint" the light you want with a small flashlight.

28 December 2004, 13:07

vapodog

this is a 404 Jeff and a 470 nitro and a six inch scale for size reference and I used a cheap sony with a flash and a contrasting background.....lets see if it turns out ok....

28 December 2004, 13:36

Clark

I take allot of digital pictures of brass cases showing the effects of overloads.
The human hand is about the right background shade of darkness and not shiney.

28 December 2004, 17:44

ricciardelli

First get yourself an 18% gray card with a flat non-reflective surface. These are available an any photo shop.

Then get two cheap pole lamps, I use ones that I bought at KMart a thousand years ago when pole lamps were in style.

Each has three lamps, and I put a 60 watt in the bottom two and a 25 watt in the top one.

Over the top one I place a sheet of heavy white cardboard as a reflector. Make suer you leave room between the bulb and the cardboard for air circulation.

You then arrange a pole lamp on either side of your gray card with whatever you are going to photograph on top of the card.

You then arrange the lower 4 lamps so that there are no harsh shadows. Sometimes you will find that only one light on each pole will be needed.

Now about the camera...

Totally depends on what you have, or how much you are willing to spend. You can go for a decent digital point-and-shoot with macro capabilities for under $150; or you can go $16,000 for a really nice SLR (plus lens).

If shooting film, I suggest only slide film, ASA between 100 and 200, and balanced for indoor lighting. If using film the only way to go is SLR.

If you go the SLR route, either film or digital, select a good 60mm f2.8 macro 1:1 lens or a good 105mm f2.8 macro 1:1 lens.

A tripod is a necessity. You don't need a $500 tripod, a good solid $50 tripod will do the job.

If you go to my terminal ballistics page ( http://stevespages.com/page8f.htm ) you will see several pictures taken with a cheap Fuji A-210 (under $125) digital.

28 December 2004, 18:19

LE270

Quote:

First get yourself an 18% gray card with a flat non-reflective surface. These are available an any photo shop.

I agree with that advice,except that most photo shops are unlikely to have these nowadays. The larger shops, especially those that serve professional photographers, will have them.

For larger things -- such as a rifle or other long gun -- you can get rolls of seamless paper, used by photographers for backgrounds. You can get this in 18% gray too, as well as white and other colors.

Quote:

Now about the camera...

Totally depends on what you have, or how much you are willing to spend. You can go for a decent digital point-and-shoot with macro capabilities for under $150; or you can go $16,000 for a really nice SLR (plus lens).

If you want a film camera, I suggest you look on ebay. You can get a good one there -- I use Canons, but other makes such as Nikon, Minolta, Pentax, and others are of equal quality -- for as little as $100. You can get a macro lens for that amount or less too.

Quote:

If shooting film, I suggest only slide film, ASA between 100 and 200, and balanced for indoor lighting.

I agree with using film balanced for indoor lighting -- it's usually called film for tungsten lighting, and is sometimes marked 3200K. Again, however, you are likely to have trouble finding it in any except camera stores that cater to professionals. If necessary, you can use regular color film (outdoor or electronic flash film) with a blue conversion filter over the lens; this is known as an 80A filter.

Of course, if you use electronic flash instead of tungsten (or quartz) lighting, you would use regular outdoor film.

Quote:

If using film the only way to go is SLR.

If you go the SLR route, either film or digital, select a good 60mm f2.8 macro 1:1 lens or a good 105mm f2.8 macro 1:1 lens.

A tripod is a necessity. You don't need a $500 tripod, a good solid $50 tripod will do the job.

I agree with this too. A 50mm macro lens will also work well. If you don't have or can't afford a macro lens, you can do excellent work with screw-in close up lenses. They screw onto the front of your lens like a filter. You can even combine two of them, one over the other, to get an even closer closeup. If you do use such a close-up lens, you should stop your lens down several stops -- at least to f 5.6, and preferably to f 8 -- because those close-up lenses are not as sharp at wide apertures.

If you want to invest in an electronic flash setup with two electronic flash heads on stands with umbrellas or softboxes, that would give you maximum flexibility and power. In that case you would also need a flash meter to get the correct exposures.

28 December 2004, 22:19

rupert

Best thing is to go to the library and look for a book on photographing three dimensional art objects. That will tell you the whole story from camera to film to filters to post photo processing. If you don't do this, at least get yourself an SLR camera and a 90-100mm macro lens (50mm means you have to be too close to the object), preferably with the capability of working at 1:1. This will allow you to see what you are photographing, directly, and get enough size of image on the film. And you will need a polarising filter and, depending upon the quality of the image you wish to achieve, polarising filters for your flood lights. Don't bother with flash. It is abysmal. And you will definitely need that grey card. Pentax and Nikon are the only camera brands that have backwards compatability. Nikon costs more than Pentax so go for Pentax with a bayonet mount (the earlier Spotmatics have a too-delicate light meter), maybe an MX, or if you are feeling flush, an LX. Use longer exposures rather than shorter to allow for vibration to stop when the shutter is tripped with a cable release or use the mirror lock feature (I'm not sure if the MX has this but the LX definitely has this very useful feature).

29 December 2004, 04:44

LE270

Quote:

Don't bother with flash. It is abysmal.

I do not agree with this advice. Flash offers several advantages, provided that you have a flash set-up that takes the flash off the camera and mounts the flash heads on stands that you can move around as you wish, and provided that you bounce the light from the flash units into reflectors of some type, such as umbrellas or white cards or soft boxes. (1) Electronic flash is of very short duration -- typically it's 1/700 of a second or less. So you do not get blurring from camera or subject movement during the exposure. (2) Flash often tends to give results that look like increased sharpness to pictures because of the quality of the light.

29 December 2004, 07:36

LE270

Quote:

Best thing is to go to the library and look for a book on photographing three dimensional art objects. That will tell you the whole story from camera to film to filters to post photo processing.

I do agree very much with this advice.

If you are really interested in the highest quality photographs of guns, photos such as you would find on the covers of magazines or in the best catalogs, you should invest in a 4 x 5 or even 8 x 10 view camera, lens(es), film holders for that camera, etc. Such equipment is relatively expensive -- although it too can be bought used, at considerable savings -- and requires a substantial amount of photographic knowledge and skill to operate. That knowledge too can be gotten from books on the operation of view cameras; the skill can be gotten only with practice.

29 December 2004, 09:39

Ray, Alaska

If you want to take a picture of the rifle with the ammo and primer next to it, that could be a problem, because you will have to zoom-in on the smaller object. When you do that, the larger object (the rifle) will be cropped.

Sooo, I imagine that you have asked "how to take individual pictures or ammo, primers, and rifles." If that's the case, then you can play with lighting and background. A white or reflective background "blinds" the camera, and the subject won't show clearly in the picture. That's why most flatbed scanners have a black color background (on the lid).

You can take closeup pictures of brass with macro lenses. Some camera lenses are built with macro capabilities, but most are not. For regular 55mm camera lenses, you can buy a set of closeup or macro lenses made by Vivitar and others. These lenses attach to the camera lens just like a filter does.

Also, experiment with primed brass on a flatbed scanner. You will be surprised with the quality of the scans. When you experiment with the scanner, remember to change the background color to see what happens. I have taken pictures of bullets that have been retrieved from game with my scanner, and posted some on the Internet. Coin shooters do the same. You can easily scan coins and show all the details and colors. You change the background color with solid sheets of paper or "crafts" cardboard.

And don't forget that if you know how to use Photoshop, you can have a large picture of a gun, and a little picture inside the large one. I use Macintosh computers to do this sort of work, so I can't tell you how to do it with a PC.