Any one who is taking photos of your work and getting great results with your photos. What are you using for a camera and lens? I'm now at the stage where I need to start showing my work on more than a local scale. Thanks for any recommendations or suggestions. Just getting some ideas before I go shopping locally.

Dave Loren
Warren,RI

Don't waste money on super high megapixel cameras. Unless you're going to be blowing the photos up to very large sizes, say larger than 10x14 inches, anything in the 6 to 10 megapixel range will be more than enough.

However, you do want manual controls. Photographing rods is more of a studio endeavor. You'll need to learn the relationship between aperature/exposure/depth of field. Once you understand that and can control it manually, you'll be able to take great rod photos.

...............

Dave,
Also, due to the nature of the shape of rods. i.e. long and lean, so to speak. It is tought to get a rods detail in a complete picture.

Rather, you are likely better off to take multiple pictures of a rod, highlighting the work on the rod. i.e. a grip, a reel seat, a butt wrap, or a special decal.

Perhaps an overall shot of the rod with several detailed photos to highlight the rods great detail that you have completed on the rod.

Take care
Roger

I have also been struggling with this.

I found some software called Photomix on the internet. It is used by scrapbookers to create scrapbooks and collages. I found it when I was trying to do a collage for my daughters wedding. It allows you to places photos anyway you want on a user defined space.

The software is available for as a free download , however if you want to save your work as a .jpg, tif,etc: you have to buy a license. I recall the license was about $30.00. I believe you can print from the .pmj file. I bought the license. It is actually kinda fun. I made a 20 x30 collage of pictures that I have taken of fish that that family and I have caught over the years. There are about 211 pictures in the collage. Note - I have no interest in the software, other than I have used it successfully.

Here is my cut at trying to get a couple of rod details on one picture. .

[www.rodbuilding.org]

You might give it a try.

Bert Nagy

Bert -
That came out darned good.

Save yourself the money on software. Google's Picasa is a freebie download. While I've never done a collage until just now, it does have the capability. In this pic the center image is a background and the others are just randomly thrown in there. You can also set the background to something else, including solid colors.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

Bert good show!!

Picassa and Corel Draw will allow you to do almost anything for collages and labels.

Corel Draw provides the ability to use various file types including vector files with conversion to jpeg

Learn to use backgrounds and the possibilities are endless.

[www.rodbuilding.org]

[www.rodbuilding.org]

[www.rodbuilding.org]

[www.rodbuilding.org]

[www.rodbuilding.org]

[www.rodbuilding.org]

Roger I would be delighted to see close up photo shots of your new spinning rods using the Fuji K series guides. Please annotate the photos to describe your version of how guides are aligned using the spine. In this case a photo would be worth a thousand words.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 03/29/2011 10:42AM by Bill Stevens.

I have trouble getting even lighting (without shadows and highlights) -you guys seem to have mastered that. Any tips on lighting? I've found a couple of the headband LED lights to help, but am open to better ideas.