I have never sent a pic to the photo page and would appreciate a little advice on camera setting and best way to photo a rod build. Camera newbie, but would like to begin sharing some pics. Thanks for any advice.

Jeff Leonard

Muskyfsh

Jeff Leonard Wrote:
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>
> would appreciate a little advice on camera setting
> and best way to photo a rod build.
> Jeff Leonard

I stink at taking rod pictures. My brother in law is a semi-pro photographer and he says its all about the lighting and the backround but I'm not spending money on lights and diffusers just to make pretty pictures. I made a makeshift photo light box last year for taking pictures of lures and other small items and the diffused light that it provides along with the white, black and blue backrounds yielded some stunning product pictures. Rods are a different animal. I'm thinking I will just start doing them all outside in natural light. Maybe streamside with aquatic weeds and gravel for a backround.

Try & take several photos of the rod. The handle/grips/seat, butt/stripper guide to winding check, mid section, tip section. Then combine those into 1 collage type picture. Your not going to be able to get the whole rod into 1 shot.

Natural daylight is best when possible. Use your camera's "macro" setting for taking close-up shots of the wraps or grip work.

Take LOTS of shots! Learn to use your photo editing software!

I can take passable photos most of the time but I'm still learning that fine art myself after a few years even.

Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

Someone asked me this at the last NERBS gathering. I was eating lunch at the time, I reached over, grabbed teh $125 nikon cheap-o camera. Clicked the Rose and put the camera into Macro, clicked the flash button and turned the flash off, and with one hand on my sandwich, and my back to teh rod bench, I leaned over, reached all teh way out,half pressed teh shutter button, waited for the autofocus to work, and snapped the photo. I did this twice, both pics were perfect.

I think people who try really hard ot get a good photo are doing themselves a disservice, all youneed is to know how ot let your camera auto focus on macro and EVERYphoto wil be just about perfect. Certain colors don't show up well, darker blue &purple, and sometimes metallics are a problem. Butin general taking photos of rods is a really simple process, regardless of teh digi cam they allwork just as good.

Perfect in what way? Such a photo will be okay for the internet, maybe, but will look like crap in print. You'll never take a really good photo in autofocus and with an electronic Macro feature.

I've always wanted to put some of Billy's work in RodMaker, but to date I have yet to see a photo he's taken that would be anywhere near suitable for the print media. Sorry Billy, those photos you speak of are not very good, much less perfect. Granted, it doesn't take much for the internet, but even then there is a world of difference between photos taken with some knowledge of the relationship between aperture, exposure and depth of field, and those taken on autofocus with an electronic macro feature. Look the photo page over and you can easily tell one from the other.

So what it boils down to is what do you really want to do with your photos. Just show a sample of your work (and that's fine) or do you want something to have as a keepsake or something that really shows your work off in a way that would be useful for advertising, etc.

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Ron,

Your brother in law is mostly correct, but you don't need to spend money on lights or backdrops - you have suitable things for both in your own home. The first thing is in learning what not to use. I'll often get a photo of an absolutely stunning custom rod set on a dog blanket, or the wife's coat, and have to discard it as something that would otherwise have been suitable for use in the magazine. The background is important and you don't want something that either detracts from nor competes with the object you're trying to get the viewer to focus on. Nothing worse that seeing a beautiful custom rod sitting on a stained and dirty door mat or something.

There are all kinds of great backdrops. A pile of sawdust. A rock garden. Even the foam sheets we buy for making EVA inlays. Anything that is simple and not "busy" will work fine. Go through the photo page and look at the photos and study the various backgrounds. That will give you some good ideas of what to use, and more importantly, what not to use.

Lighting is a little tricky due to the nature of fishing rods - our clear thread coatings cause glare. But often you can use this to your advantage. Want to show someone how level and smooth your finish is? Adjust the angle of the rod to allow any glare line to form off the main body of the work and show itself as a straight line (if the finish is wavy, the glare line will be too). Want to show off the brilliance of a decorative feature on the rod? Adjust the rod so that glare is at an off angle across a portion of the work. This way it will form a bright spot or even a light "star" near the item you want the viewer to focus on.

Sunlight is generally too harsh. Shade generally too dark. A small flourescent lamp a foot or two above a rod is about right. If it's on a swing arm you can move it around to get rid of or create shadows and alter where the glare line falls.

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TOm, he wants to post in the photo forum. HEre's the last wrap I took a pic of, which took me all of 5 seconds to take: [www.rodbuilding.org] There's no need to go crazy worrying about how to take a pic for the photo page, it's really simle. Is that the best photo, definitely not, but it's in focus and clear enough to see teh 3 different shades of Gold which you can't even tell in real life.

My Dad does photography for a hobby/retirement business, I should have him take a few pics and send them in

I understand and from the standpoint of just putting something up to give folks an idea of the work you're doing it's certainly fine. But what can't be done with that photo, is to try and use in the magazine, or even in something like the slide show I had playing at the Expo - it would look absolutely terrible.

As I said, it's all about what you intend to do with the photo.

If your dad would take a few photos, by all means send them in. I'd love to use a few.

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Tom and Billy both make excellent points but they're talking from two different perspectives. If you just want to post viewable pics on the photo page here then you don't need super high resolution images with magazine quality layout. A simple point and shoot, autofocus, autoexposure, with macro setting, and "small image" resolution will usually do the job just fine. As Ray pointed out you will eventually want to learn how to collage multiple closeups into one image that shows the various aspects of your work. Just like rod building, as you get familiar with your tools and techniques you will realize that your photos could be improved. If you want to get your images published then you'll want to learn the finer details of photography. With digital cameras it very inexpensive to experiment with lighting, backgrounds, editing, etc. Just jump into it and see what works for what you want to accomplish...

1) Learn how to use your camera; macro vs close-up lenses, telephoto vs wide angle, flash vs indoor lighting vs natural lighting, autofocus vs manual, aperture and speed settings, etc.
2) Learn how to use your photo editing software; croping, color correction, resampling, copy and paste functions, etc.
3) Learn the requirements and capabilities of the presentation formats; Web Images display at 72~96 dots per inch (dpi), most Inkjet printers can print 300~1200 dpi, Monochrome Laser printers usually print from 1200~2400 dpi, magazine quality is usually defined as 1200~2400 dpi, and "photo quality" is usually considered to be at least 1400 dpi

As for the asthetics of backgrounds; a simple yard full of grass will do nicely but you can always play around...
[www.rodbuilding.org]
[www.rodbuilding.org]

Thanks for the useful tips. I will be playing with rod/ lighting angles and backrounds. My wife was in the photo developing biz for 15 years (back when there was such a thing) and she has trained me on Photo Shop Pro and a couple othere editing programs that I dont use anymore. I can make a shoe look like a boat or a boat look like bear.Or a collage of bears, boats and shoes. lol You can only do so much to a product picture electronically though. I know pictures of food always look better on the menu than when they deliver it to your plate but doing a bunch of editing because it looks cool then delivering something that looks different isnt what I want. I want quality shots off the lense.

I cant shake the image of Billy grabbing a camera and shooting over his back while mawing on a sammich with his feet kicked up like an old west gunslinger shootin a bug on the wall. Thats funny stuff!

Thanks for the info gentleman ,from the looks of things I have a lot of experimenting to do and I am good with that. I will try my best to use all of your advice. What a great resource you gentlemen provide. I will have to spend some time practicing so I feel comfortable displaying my pics.

Thanks to all of You,
Jeff Leonard

Muskyfsh

Ron, I got the pic off the camera for you, here you go:[www.rodbuilding.org] All I did to edit it was crop and straighten it out, the rest was Macro autofocus and no flash.