Howdy All.

I just purchased a Vivitar, ViviCam 8600s, digital camera to use for taking photos of rods for my website. It has 8.1 Megapixel CCD capabilites. Hopefully, this camera will be capable of taking the quality of photos that I am looking for. My question to all of you who manage to get very high quality photos of your rods is how you do it? My attempts have always been lighted poorly and anything bright on the rod, reel seat components, guides, etc. always look garishly shiny and the reflection along the rod always interferes with the signature or decal, etc. Any advice on how to light the rod correctly before photographing would be greatly appreciated. Also, any advice on the camera settings would be helpful. In the past, I have used the macro setting and not gone far beyond that. But the background always appears darker or lighter than it actually is. I could go on and on about my "photography disability". The truth is I am just too frugal to hire a professional photographer who is going to charge me an annual royalty fee to use his or her photos. Any help from all of you compentent photographers out there would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance.

Best,
Steve Jenkins
Jenkins Fly Rods

For internet or web use, the 8.1 megapixels will go to waste - you'll never be displaying anything that large and your photos will be backlit and not shown in high resolution. For the internet, 3 megapixels will easily do as well as the internet is a low resolution medium.

Okay, first of all, you do need to get a book on basic photography and learn the relationship between shutter speed and lens opening (aperature). Small aperature openings and long exposure times create good "depth of field" where you entire photograph is in good focus. Wide lens openings and short exposure times create short depth of field where your subject is in focus but not much of anything else. Both are fine depending on what you're trying to showcase. If you can read about and understand these simple relationships, you have most of the photo game licked.

If you use your camera's built in light meter and select your own aperature opening (aperature priority) you will want to take the exposure time while your rod is on a medium grey background. The background is much larger than the rod and the camera will tend to base it's auto settings on that large area and color. Note the exposure while the grey background is in place. Then, swap out for whatever background you desire but set the exposure back to where it was with the grey background. This will ensure that your rod is neither washed out nor dark.

Indirect lighting is best. This means you'll have to bounce light off something above or next to the rod. Although, you can use direct lighting to good effect with a diffuser on the lens of whatever light you employ. One thing about fishing rods - the smooth epoxy coating really is a pain to photograph as it tends to reflect light in the worst kind of way. If possible, you may wish to take photos with bare or CP coated thread instead of waiting until the epoxy has been applied.

I'd also advise you to read your camera's manual all the way through, although it will be a pain because you'll have dozens and dozens of auto settings that can be confusing and will almost never do as well as you can do on your own, once you learn the right settings for aperature, exposure and focus, for any given situation. Photography is very simple, but modern cameras have made it a bit more difficult due to have far too many features. Learn the basics and stick to them.

Don't fiddle with the "quality" settings on your camera. They're not really about quality, but rather about photo size. For the internet, you can use the lowest "quality" setting and you'll have a photo that will look every bit as good as the much larger (file size) high quality setting. Jpegs are fine, although if you plan to do much editing then Camera RAW or Tiff files are the only way to go. You can do quite a bit of editing in something like Photoshop Elements and with RAW files you can even "develop" the raw data into the exact photo you want. And of course, this will require more reading and learning on your part as well.

Of course, this was all covered pretty thouroughly in a past issue of RodMaker. What I've written here is a bit helter skelter, but again, learn the basics and stick to them. Luckily, the internet is the easiest medium to take photos for because your photos will be viewed on a backlit screen.

Steve,
For my use I have found that the quality of the flash is about as important if not more than the camera. As Tom said you will not need super high resolution but a diffused light is absolutely necessary. I am going to assume your camera has a hot shoe. You need to get a flash that can rotate away from the rod. I rotate my flash towards the ceiling and play with various angles and the use of the built in diffuser.

Whenever possible outside settings are really nice and you can't beat natural light.

Lots of very good info above! I tried my first rod pictures recently and it was a pain to get some decent shots. I had the best luck outside on a bright, overcast day. Time for me to check out that back issue...

Chuck

I have no clue about photography, I use the MAcro feature, point, hold the picture taking button so teh camera Auto focusses, then click the photo. If you're concerned with lighting, just take 50 pictures with teh lighting at various angles, use contrasting or solid color backgrounds, and you'll eventually manage to get 1 that is suitable. Also, a photo editting software package helps, I use Microsoft Photo Editor, and I adjust the Balance, Contrast & one other setting. Beyond that I dont' mess around.

Just keep taking photos, they are free, you get instant feedback to see if you are on teh right track or not.

I've never had good luck with a flash unit with photo-ing fishing rods. Too much sudden light on a reflective surface. I juse go outside or use plenty of regular incandescent light inside.

Another thing to mention that Tom didn't was the "film speed" you set your camera to. The lower the setting the higher the quality and less noise you get. The downside is that the lower the setting the more exposure time you need so at 100 or so you will most likely want to use a tripod or something to steady the camera.

Everything Tom and the folks wrote above is spot-on, but here's two more thoughts:

Use a "clean" room, where there's not much shadow on the table where your rod will be mounted. Use the surrounding lights, be they table or ceiling based, and just turn them all on. Use the "macro" mode, and add one more trick - instead of using flash, use the "EV" settings on your camera to produce the lightest photos you can (the rnge usually is from -3 to +3, inn .5 increments.

Then use the photo-editing software to add contrast or darken the photo. You can always reverse an effect after you apply it, but save the modified photos under a different name anyway, to preserve the original and so you can compare different combinations of effects against each other as you progress.

Uncle Russ