I working with my camera this week and have questions about background color. What if any do you prefer or does it matter? Looking though publications such as DGJ I see about everything under the rainbow, do some distract or not to a picture? If there is a color you like, and not shown, let me know and I’ll try it.

This is the original picture with my white backdrop, the rest (linked to save space) are with a color background.

PS: Bill, here is the picture you ask for.




http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color5-1.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color7.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color8.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color9.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color10.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color11.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color12.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color13.jpg


I’ve removed some of the more harsh colors and with feedback will adjust or remove more.

It's by Mullin, New York.

Mike I like the black one first and then the white. I don't care much for the others.

I think the white one is the best picture

I think your non-white backgrounds are too intense colors. For publication, I suspect white is best; for a print, I might favor a less intense but colored background.

The colors look pretty shocking, they aren't "real"--hard to tell. I've seen green or red cloth backgrounds look great, but the compter-generated green and red colored backgrounds almost had me siezing.

White!

A more muted green or red, is this better?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color7.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color8.jpg

Ditto David. The white is least distracting. I like cluttered backgrounds; baize, briar and burley is alright altho something of a DGJ cliche. I'm impatient so have gotten used to outdoor blue sky, black bark, gray fencepost, brown straw, green leaves for my own slapdash, get it lit now efforts. I always wonder what those bag of the day photos do to blueing. Do they use bandaids?

jack

Natural backgrounds only, wood, tweed and so on - and so forth.
An old orange crate for the lessers, or weathered barnwood will do - tweed for the betters.
Save your colors for Easter Eggs!

White. Very handsome old gun. What can you tell us about it?

Michael, having spent years in TV and photography, gray is the preferred color for most applications in that it provides a very restful background with no distractions-I prefer a lighter gray but you may have to experiment with your lighting system. Gray cards are traditionally used for setting exposures and color balance. Regards, Dr. Dozier sends

Michael, i think the white looks the best compared to the other colors.
Here's one that Ken H. posted and it makes the subject jump out.
It's a nice contrast.

John, Thanks for the info, the majority of my published photographs for the last ten years have been B&W. Then my backdrop was the same gray as a gray card and worked fine. I now need to learn color for pictures I’m taking for book projects, mine and others. I’m getting board looking at the white background although that seems the best. I’m not allowed to make any color decisions at home ;-) so maybe I should follow the same rule for pictures.

At the end of the day if the focus is on the item, white is the only clear choice. Every color variation of the object is then picked up without being influenced by the background color.

GRAY!

I liked 10 the muted grey green. I guess that's because the background relative brightness is close to the subject brightness. I'm no pro but a tad more frontal illumination might be a little better. Very nice

While white is ok I'm going to be contrary here and pick grey. It IMO create the least startling contrast with the gun and,to me, the firearms details stand out better with this background.
Jim

Harry,

When you say front illumination, do you mean more light on the gun, something like this?

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color13.jpg

White is safe. But I prefer light gray or an unsaturated blue or green. I think #11 is best, easier on the eyes even than your white. Try some different hues, but with the saturation level of #11.

Much better, Michael!

May I ask what software allows you to change the background color in that fashion?

I'm using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2.0 sooner or later I need to buy the full Photoshop.

Michael,
I'm with John Dozier in some ways. A 18% neutral gray is easiest on the eyes so that you can focus on the subject. However, if you must have color (gray is not a color, IMO), pick an intensity that would reproduce around the 18% gray if shot in B&W. The specific color then just becomes a matter of tastes. BTW, the white/lightest background makes it difficult for me to focus on the subject as well as a neutral intensity background. The black makes the subject flare a bit, to me.

Solid backgrounds may be a bit plain, but there is no distraction for your eyes, if the pic is for technical identification of features. If artistic presentation is the goal, by all means, go with Thorney's suggestion of natural backgrounds.

I think that it is a matter of context and purpose. If you want the picture to as clearly as possible show the guns outlines and colours, white or grey is best. Backgrounds with logs, tweed and beautiful game are nice, but it draws the attention away from the gun and puts the emphasis on the lifestyle component. If you want the picture to both express dreams and promises of a luxorious lifestyle and to show the gun clearly, black is the preferred colour.

Nice photo Michael!
I'm using mostly 18% gray, but do agree, it gets boring.

Did not say it could not become boring, just that it helped focus the eye on the object, not the background> I have been experimenting with light tents and find they are an easy way to obtain soft, yet detailed photos. You might want to try it. There are some commercially available or you might construct your own from some white cloth (old Parachutes work well). Regards.Dr. Dozier sends

Yes, Michael that is exactly what I meant. On the first series of images the checkering at 11 oclock on the grip (When looking forward from the rear) or just down the left side from the top tang almost gets lost because the is too little light. This latest image provides greeat detail while not washing out the detail with too much light.

Michael,
I'm guessing you left all the lighting alone from pic to pic? The exposure variance (small but noticable on the last pic) must have been from the camera auto exposure trying to average?

I found your color 13 to be the clearest and least intrusive. No glare at all which does some in the white.

Michael,

I have emailed a jpeg to you. I don't use a photo hosting site, so that's the best I could do. It is a test photo that I just shot using a mottled grey canvas background that I painted myself.

Best regards,
David

This is all very interesting to me as I am going to post an RBL for sale on this site in the near future and I have been giveing some thought as to the best method to acomplish the task. I am but a mere novice at posting pics however my Son who is way more computer savy then old Dad will be home this weekend and will assist me. This is indeed a neat place to visit at the end of the day!

Posted for David, he can explain.

Mike, it seems even the pros don't get the gun lit up as well as it could be using a white background. Of all of them , I prefer the grey. The Holt Auction catalog uses a fairly dark blue and their photos are great. I enjoy the guns, but really have seen enough tweed and other stuff.

WOW! I have been away from the computer and backed up. I’ll try to answer all questions. I have tried cloth and do have parachute cloth but did not use it on this one. I’m using reflected light off dull white. Yes all the pictures were the same with only the color changes, the last one (13) was a longer exposure by myself. I have never taken a picture with the camera in auto ;-).

SDH, with your help I’ve got this far, glad you like it.

Daryl, Thanks I’ll pull a Holt’s catalog and have a look.


The thing I don’t want to do is distract from the gunmakers artistic work. It’s been difficult to capture firearms the way I see them. The warmth and glow of a hundred years of patina is hard enough to convey in words, pictures are just as hard to master.

My impression is that the background should be of a color(s) that has (have) as little opportunity of being confused with a/o sharing with colors of the subject. Thus colors in the firearm such as blues (action case color), reds (case color and wood), greys (action), and browns (wood) should not be used as background in photos of a firearm. I think that some of the photos with a dark green background work quite well. That being said lighting is prolly most important in that it shouldn't be so direct as to create reflection but light and diffused enough to show the details. Also the background color(s) should not detract attention from the subject (yellow should be dismissed but straw or mustard might work well).

To my eyes white washes out the highlights of metal work.

To convey the guns true appearance from a technical standpoint gray would be best. I imagine this is what you're looking for.

To sell a gun a dark background makes the gun "pop" and the contrast looks good.

I have to say though I like the 3D effect that David Drew's mottled background provides.

BTW you can buy a used edition of Photoshop on Ebay relatively cheap. Professional photographers and the like have to keep up with the latest edition and frequently sell the older editions. I have a 5 year old copy for Mac that suits me fine, it has more stuff than I'll ever use.

One of the things I found is that lighting will drastically change the way casecolors appear. The pics below illustrate. Actually, the direct flash lighting shows them closer to reality than the bounced flash diffused lighting.





With other features of a gun, different lighting such that shadows are cast to detect texture, may be needed. Experimentation may reveal the best solution for a particular subject detail.



Figure of wood is particularly sensitive to lighting changes on how it appears in pics in my experience.

[/quote]

Michael, Thank you very much for posting the photo for me. I shot the photo in a hurry more to show the background and didn't have time to set up the reflectors I would normally use. It was shot with two Nikon strobes mounted on a Really Right Stuff Flash Bracket. One strobe faced forward and had a Lumiquest soft box, the other faced 180 degrees and fired into a circular reflector held by a boom stand.

The effect is to illuminate the foreground subject and have sufficient distance between the subject and the background that the background will be out of focus. The soft background provides some texture and some variation without drawing your attention away from the subject. These painted backgrounds are available from any of the photography suppliers, but I made this one.

Best regards,
David

Nice work, here's one small suggestion. When non-flat lighting is used, the stronger light generally should come from above, not below. We're used to seeing things lit by the sun and sky, highlights above and shadows toward the bottom.

I threw this setup together in a hurry because I was working on another job and just wanted to show the background to everyone. The master stobe was above with a softbox and the fill strobe was set to fire at about half power and was aimed backwards and upside down firing at a round light disc type reflector. I couldn't spend a lot of time on it. Normally I would build a silk tent and use hot lights on individual stands and use distance to regulate the fill light.

Just a point I recall from my photo classes in college, some fluorescent lighting tends to be magenta (pinkish) which has a "cold" cast. Of course, with digital cameras and computer editting, color cast can now be changed drastically at will.

Thanks for all the input, I’ve learned a lot. Seems the consensus is gray, white, or shades of gray-green or gray-blue. I’ll keep experimenting which is part of the fun. Trying to find a used copy of Photoshop on Ebay is good advice and I’ll keep my eyes open. This was fun, maybe next time we can talk about photographing engraving. I took photos of two nickel plated engraved Colt SSA’s and I’m in no hurry to try that again.

Michael- QUIT THAT -those photos are painful! I don't know how you find these critters....

I like that last background the best, but I REALLY LOVE that rifle.

Brent

Thanks Brent, I like to sneak a rifle in now and then, if you really would like some pain click below, a consecutive serial number of the Ballard above.

From the collection of “Anonymous”


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/3407C.jpg

The treatment of the barrel at the action on the "consecutive numbered" Ballard #6 you have posted at http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/3407C.jpg
is unique in my experience. Glenn Fewless and other single shot metal smiths should take a print of this for future reference.

Thanks for posting it!

If you pick up Photoshop you can use chroma key to replace the background. Same digital magic as in the movies. I have been fooling around with GIMP and doing chroma key is not fun with that software.

Pete

Michael:
Would you provide us with details regarding the technique you used to photograph the Springfield Sporter posted above? That one seems to have very nice balance between contrast and clarity.

Chuck:
Your second picture is also IMO excellent.
Jim

Didn't intend to get involved in this thread, but.... WOW!

If you have Steven Dodd Hughes book “Custom Rifles in Black & White” look on page 182. I use a setup a lot like his, rifle is held vertical on a polished steel rod in the bore. Reflected light from 2-500 and 2-250 3200 photo lights with defuser, all on a rheostat. For the Springfield I lowered the light until I got a nice soft light and used a long exposure, tripod of course. With digital I can do many shots with a faster or slower exposure in a short amount of time and just delete the bad ones. When I shoot engraving I have two leather straps hanging from the ceiling and shoot the gun in the horizontal position and use a hand held light (defused) to highlight the engraving. Background put in later with software Photoshop Elements. I have several colored backgrounds but will get some more, I think the picture can look better with a background and not added by the computer, but the jury is still out.

Just looking at Steve’s book and see the cover has two rifles with a dull red background and they look good.

If to sell the gun, a non-descript background is fine, but for show and tell here, a few trappings are needed to warm-up the picture. Sometimes, if you've seen one gun, you've seen them all.

No 13 seemed to add brightness and color to the stock wood, and detail to the metal. Were the conditions the same as with the other colors? I can't say that I prefer the background color, but it does wonders for the subject.

No. 13 had a longer exposure, what I need to do now is try a few different colors with it but any of the muted grays seems to work best. All the colors in the world don't help if I don't take a good picture in the first place. What I'm finding out with this thread is that what I like may not be the best for others.

Here is the same exposure with a gray background.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color19.jpg
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v311/mjpetrov/color13.jpg

Mike, can you elaborate a bit on what you like and what you are finding from others ? I really like pictures that show all the detail of the engraving, so that the lettering etc can be seen easily. I wonder if multiple lighting sources make this more difficult, or can a "good" camera with the proper lenses usually do what I am talking about ?

No pain here, Michael. Your pics just give me pleasure. Keep it up.

I'm with Lowell on the composition stuff. I've always liked the stuff in DGJ because of it.

I've not always liked the "flat" lighting, most of the DGJ pics seem to have, for showing detail. But it sure makes the guns look good, maybe much better than in person. For Oooo and Ahhh stuff, flat lighting works well with most things. But for detail definition or color presentation, other lighting often is better.

One of the easiest ways to get soft "flat" lighting is with a bounce of a flash off of white walls or ceilings.

Daryl,
Well, I did not think anyone would like the bright colors but my sense of color is so bad I had to ask. I like the pictures a little more on the darker side where I think they show the wood better and maybe a darker background. Looks like what I need is more practice getting the wood and metal a little lighter and making sure the detail is there. For the close-up of the engraving I use a little background lighting and hand hold a defused light, normally under or over the engraving until it is sharp and clear in the viewfinder. The better the camera the less problems but proper position and lighting will help with any camera.

Michael, tell "Anonymous" that I absolutely hate him and ask him if he will put me in his will and then die soon... just kidding. What calibers are those beauties.


BTW, while I suck at this sort of photography, I do make a lot of public presentations, and of course, lectures. One thing I try to avoid are greens and reds since red-green color blindness is so common. It is not so easy to do as one might think at times, but anyway, consider that some X% of your target audience is likely to be at least partially color blind.

Brent

I would suspect that if you look at the colors the top end case makers use regulary,you will find the ones that display the best for wood, color and engraving, combined. But with photos of a specific area of a gun, that may change everything. Interesting topic!

CH

Well his will go the same way mine will, at auction, someday, just buy a catalog and get in line .

The long-range is .44-100 Ballard Everlasting the other .38-55.

Is anyone using a strobe for lighting? One well known gun photographer made the suggestion, however a good stobe(s) look like about $1,000.

I think hot lights (quartz lighting instruments) are easier to work with. With digital cameras adjusting for quartz color temperature without losing 2 stops to a filter is not a problem.

Michael,
The two pics I posted of the engraved Nitro on page 4 of this thread are both with a strobe. In the top one, I bounced it off the wall to the left. On the second pic, I shot it directly at the subject from the camera mounted flash.

Here is yet another flash picture with the light bounced off the wall to the right and at a low angle.




This pic is with the flash bounced off the white ceiling and making the light very flat.

Michael, exellent photos!
IMHO the background has to be natural. Grey or white or another light color, but something natural.
Sorry for little off, but this photo been shot from primitive "soap holder" - Canon Ixus-500 and direct flash light. Background - piece of white paper that goes from horizontal to vertical position behind calls.

Geno, A picture that does just what it is supposed to do, show the work very well. Good picture, MP

Michael,
I have a Nikon SB800 strobe that runs about $300 and the remote cord that runs about $60, and the diffusor that was about $30. The flash will remotely TTL slave from the intregal camera flash. The cord allows the SB800 to TTL without setting off the camera flash in case you want to move the flash around to a different angle or bounce.

I would cast my vote with Jerry & the rest for #13 background as being the least intrusive/distractive and making it easiest to stay focused on the subject matter.

As an aside, rubbing a scratch with the meat of a raw pecan or black walnut will hide it quite well, usually completely from the naked eye, and will have zero effect on the original finish. I've used pecans mostly for that task. The remedy was shown me by a furniture finisher who dealt with highly polished furniture like dining room table tops and such. Pretty amazing instant result too. I have no experience whether it would hide a scratch from a camera, but I don't see why it would not.

Chuck I'll check into some different strobes as well as the one you are using. When I looked into the strobes that were suggested to me the cost would be about $1200, that was two 1000's.

Interesting idea about the raw nut, learn something new every day. Petty hard to hid anything from the camera.

My brother has Canon equipment and he has a similar capability flash from Canon, if you go that route. Canon has a lot going for their cameras, IMO. The new D80 and D200 line are catching up with the Canons though. Mine is a D50 which seems to work well enough. But the LCD viewer on the back of the D80/D200 is much larger and easier for my eyes (plus the newer models have 10 mpxls vs. 6).

These new generation of flashes are truly incredible devices.

The Nikon SB-800 is a great flash. I'm a big fan of the Nikon Creative Lighting System. The SB-800 usually runs around $350. To get the most out of the newest Nikon technology, you need to use the SB-800 as your master flash. The SB-600 runs under $200 and can be used as fill flash when controlled by the 800. You really need to get the master flash off of the camera shoe. The older SC-17 cable, or the newer SC-28 will get the master flash away from the camera and then there are longer cables and remote shoes for fill, rim or back light flash units. The whole deal could come in under a $1,000. You'll want some light stands, adapters, and sand bags too. The diffuser shown in Chuck's picture is the LumiQuest.

Best,
David