# Camera & Equipment for taking Rosewood Furniture



## Kkat (Oct 12, 2012)

Hi everyone,

I was informed that i needed more equipment or upgraded equipment to take better pictures of our rosewood furniture for our website. I'm not very knowledgable with photography, so i would like to get some input from the experts out there.

We usually take the furniture outside on a nice cloudy day and adjust the color in photoshop. 

We currently have a FinePix S700 Digital Camera (7.1 Mega Pixels) for taking the pictures. Winter is coming and we won't be able to take many pictures outside anymore due to snow... etc. So we will have to try and take the pictures inside. Does anyone know if we would need a better camera to take pictures of the furniture with a more precise color? If so what would some suggestions be? Usually the rosewood reddish color turns extremely dark and blackish when we try inside. 

Also any other equipment that would help out? We have a black ceiling, black floor, 1 white wall and 1 black wall. Using White and Black boards to try and attain color of pieces.

Thanks!


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## 2WheelPhoto (Oct 12, 2012)

Cambridge tutorials will help you tremendously with your photography.

Digital Photography Tutorials


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## amolitor (Oct 12, 2012)

This thing has a "custom white balance" mode, which should be helpful. Consult your manual. Basically, though, you calibrate the camera's idea of what "white" is and then the rest of the color gamut should fall in to place, so you should get accurate colors for your furniture.

After that, I would suggest a tripod if you haven't got one.

Then work out how to use the lowest ISO setting on the camera, and the highest image quality. Again, consult your manual.

Finally, watch the backgrounds. It's amazingly difficult, especially indoors to get a picture that doesn't have someone's office chair, or a lamp, or some ugly thing, lurking in the background.

Oh, yeah: For your web site this camera should be able to produce sufficiently good work. Upgrading gear isn't going to magically make anything better. It's not a great camera, but it's probably sufficient to the task.


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## Patrice (Oct 12, 2012)

You mentioned 'nice cloudy day' in your post. That is the key to the answer to your question. Successful product photography of large objects like cars and bookcases is mostly dependant on lighting and not so much on expensive cameras and lenses. On your 'nice cloudy day' shoots the sky is a super sized light box illuminating your subject with gentle soft even light. No harsh highlights, no bright light reflections, nice soft shadows having almost a sculpting effect. The trick is that you will have to try and duplicate that light indoors. Look at decent quality studio lighting and the larger the object the more you'll need.


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## Kkat (Oct 16, 2012)

Patrice said:


> You mentioned 'nice cloudy day' in your post. That is the key to the answer to your question. Successful product photography of large objects like cars and bookcases is mostly dependant on lighting and not so much on expensive cameras and lenses. On your 'nice cloudy day' shoots the sky is a super sized light box illuminating your subject with gentle soft even light. No harsh highlights, no bright light reflections, nice soft shadows having almost a sculpting effect. The trick is that you will have to try and duplicate that light indoors. Look at decent quality studio lighting and the larger the object the more you'll need.



That's exactly what i thought also about recreating the outside light indoors. The issue is, i don't know exactly how to go about doing that. Right now our studio is approximately 216"W x219"D x127"H usable space. With 4 all Season Shop Lights; one on each side of a wall.

Any ideas on what to do with this setup? Is the studio just too small? Need more of these season shop lights or need different lights in general?


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## Buckster (Oct 16, 2012)

First, as others have pointed out, you need to get your white balance set.  There are lots of tools out there to do that.  A color-neutral gray card made for the purpose is cheap and easy to use.

Second, are the walls and ceiling of your studio white?  If so, try pointing the lights at them instead of at your subject, from a distance.  That will turn them into giant reflectors, which will soften the light considerably and give more of that outdoor-cloudy-day look.


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## Kkat (Oct 16, 2012)

Buckster said:


> First, as others have pointed out, you need to get your white balance set. There are lots of tools out there to do that. A color-neutral gray card made for the purpose is cheap and easy to use.
> 
> Second, are the walls and ceiling of your studio white? If so, try pointing the lights at them instead of at your subject, from a distance. That will turn them into giant reflectors, which will soften the light considerably and give more of that outdoor-cloudy-day look.



We have a black ceiling, black floor, 1 white wall and 1 black wall. Using White and Black boards to try and attain color of pieces.

The black walls we use for Black Funiture. Like Black Matte or Black Lacquer Furniture so that it retains the black color of the piece. Also some of the black boards we use to block out some massive glares as well as reflections that appear on the furniture.


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## KmH (Oct 16, 2012)

Outside overcast light, or recreating that light inside, provides very 'flat' light that does not show off a product to best advantage.

Like most things, there are fundamentals of photographic lighting. Learning how to apply those fundamentals is the key to being able to consistently produce high quality product images.

An inexpensive book (good enough to be in it's 4th edition) that explains the fundamentals is - Light Science and Magic, Fourth Edition: An Introduction to Photographic Lighting 

Professional quality product lighting takes some time (a year or 2 of doing it on an almost daily basis) to learn. Not only do good product photographers add light, they also subtract light and use a variety of aids like flags and gobos to ensure the light goes exactly where they want it to go.


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## .SimO. (Oct 16, 2012)

Why are you taking the Rosewood furniture outside the normal elements and exposing it like that just for a picture? Hopefully the weather conditions didn't adjust much from the temps inside to out...  

Best thing would be to take a macro shot up close with the camera on a tripod of the detail in rosewood.  As dark as rosewood is, you will need ample light at the subject without casting reflections.  Best time to take a picture of it is prior to putting on a new coat of any type of wood oil cleaner/polisher.


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## Kkat (Oct 16, 2012)

.SimO. said:


> Why are you taking the Rosewood furniture outside the normal elements and exposing it like that just for a picture? Hopefully the weather conditions didn't adjust much from the temps inside to out...
> 
> Best thing would be to take a macro shot up close with the camera on a tripod of the detail in rosewood. As dark as rosewood is, you will need ample light at the subject without casting reflections. Best time to take a picture of it is prior to putting on a new coat of any type of wood oil cleaner/polisher.



We take the pictures of the furniture to place online for customer viewing. It just happens that outside when it's a nice cloudy day that the rosewood color shows up better. Inside, it's just too dark. The only issues is for the cherry and dark cherry color rosewood furniture. Also have our factories in China create the furniture and then they ship it to us in the US, so we can't really take a picture of the furniture prior to putting on the coat of cleaner/polisher.


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## Kkat (Oct 16, 2012)

KmH said:


> Outside overcast light, or recreating that light inside, provides very 'flat' light that does not show off a product to best advantage.
> 
> Like most things, there are fundamentals of photographic lighting. Learning how to apply those fundamentals is the key to being able to consistently produce high quality product images.
> 
> ...



My employer would like to find the fastest and best way to take the pictures without taking a year or two. I would love to learn everything there is to photography, but that's not possible with our schedule. Though i will bring it up to them regarding the book that you recommended. Do you really think that book would be beneficial for our current situation?


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## Kkat (Oct 16, 2012)

2WheelPhoto said:


> Cambridge tutorials will help you tremendously with your photography.
> 
> Digital Photography Tutorials



I read some parts of the tutorials. I appreciate the help. I ran across the section Shade and Overcast Sunlight.

http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/natural-light-photography.htm

That type of lighting i believe is what we're aiming for. To recreate that type of light spread across and not directly hitting the furniture. Any ideas of how to recreate it?


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## Roger3006 (Nov 8, 2012)

I Photograph firearms which can be tricky.  A walnut stock looks best in sunlight.  That is rarely practical for me to do.  I normally use two medium softboxes with Speedotron 102s; however, I may use a strip softbox or a small softbox.    My power supply(s) is a Speedotron 2403cx.  The power supply allows me to vary the intensity of the strobes independently.  I do my best to duplicate daylight with my lighting.  I make final adjustments in  Lightroom or Photoshop.

I recommend reading he above mentioned book.  I also recommend experimenting.  I constantly change the intensity of my lights, vary the distance of the lights, and also vary the angle of the lights.  With practice, you will get a feel for what to use and where to place  it.  As mentioned above, you may find a bounce flash good.I have found more ways to bank light off the walls than a cross eyed pool player.   

In my opinion, there is more than  one way to get from point a to point b.  Study, experiment, and practice.  You will  something that works well for you.

Depending on the size of you furniture, you may require large softbox over the object with another light source for two from the sides.  Start with the  basics and work your way up.  What you think  you need and what you end up using might be completely different.

Good Luck,

Roger


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## texkam (Nov 9, 2012)

Lack of knowlege and equipment? Man, I'd be farming this sucker out to a pro. You suggest you have a hectic schedule. Why eat up man hours on this when you can be making money?


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