Sharon, Just when I thought I'd have time to be a regular at CF again...my time gets zapped up so quickly. I wanted you to know I am thoroughly enjoying these posts! I am having a great time figuring out what you're saying with my own camera. My pictures have already improved remarkably. I've been begging (okay, whining) to take some classes and they just aren't to be found around here. Your tutorials are just what I need! Thank you for all your time! Deb

You're right - Gina was holding the camera for that video, as you can tell from her voice, which is the most prominent. I have a lot of raw video with other demonstrations that I have not had time to get around to editing yet. I don't even have my sewing room completely organized yet for video editing, although the computer I use for video editing is already set up there - along with two sewing machines, which have been getting a lot of use lately. When I finish making all the drapes, curtains, pillows, and cushions that I need, I will convert the room to a video editing room. Unfortunately, it is too small to be both simultaneously. I'm still in the process of settling in, and I guess it's going to take a full year. Lars

Posted by canarybird (My Page) on Wed, Jul 22, 09 at 14:41 FOOD PHOTO TIPS : Part 3 - Lighten or Darken Your Photos with EV Hi everyone! I'm back again with another chapter of hints on how to use your digital camera for taking tabletop photos. I hope everything so far has been easy to understand. But I'll be going over and repeating some things as well so they're not forgotten or misunderstood. For those who are unfamiliar with this very useful item, I want to introduce the EV function on your camera. EV stand for Exposure Value and the button or menu option is called the Exposure Compensation, or Exposure Bias. Here's the icon, which is a square with plus and minus signs inside. You may find this icon stamped on the arrow pad on the back of your camera as in Fig, 17. When that upper arrow is pressed, it produces a new icon in the top right corner of the LCD screen as in Fig. 18, where a black rectangle shows 0.0 and two blue right/left arrows. That tells you that you are now able to use the EV function, and by pressing the right and left sides of the arrow pad you will either increase or decrease the value which will appear in that top right corner of the screen. The increments go up to plus or minus 2 in steps of 1/3 or 1/2. Example: +0.3, +0.7, +1.0 etc. up to +2 (or minus when using that arrow pad.) So for what is that used? In short, you can manually lighten or darken the picture you see in the viewfinder before shooting by using this setting. Sometimes when your subject is dark against a bright background, the light meter adjusts the overall setting for the brightness, leaving your subject too dark. In that case you would (on my camera here) press the right side of the arrow pad as in Fig. 18a. Now you see the number in the top right screen corner has changed to +0.3 to brighten the picture. If I were happy with that, I would then press the OK button in the centre of the arrow pad and then press the shutter to take the picture. If I wanted the picture to be lighter still, I would press the arrow pad twice instead of once, which would give me +0.7. In the case where the overall picture was too bright and the subject was going to look lighter than I would like, then I'd press the left arrow and that would give me a minus value, darkening the photo Fig. 18b. You can get some very lovely effects with a -0.3 setting, especially outdoors where it is often so bright that your photos can look a little overexposed. I keep my cameras set at -0.3 for nearly all my outdoor photos. And my daughter was very pleased when I told her about that when she was getting used to a new camera. Her garden photos turned out so much better with the EV set to -0.3 on bright days. And some closeup flower photos can look quite dramatic at this setting. Here is where I find the EV option on my little pocket Stylus. By pressing the main menu in the centre of the back arrow pad I get these four options in Fig. 19. On this camera one presses the top and bottom arrows to lighten or darken the picture. Fig. 20. In Fig. 21 you see the EC has been set to +0.7. I show the example of this second camera only to illustrate that you may have to look in more than one place to find the EV function on your camera. I was setting up to illustrate the differences in EV settings and found another good use for a small bag of dry catfood! Fig. 22. Together with a clothespeg and a sheet of white paper it makes an idea reflector for the small object on the table. I changed my mind and used some orange poster paper as a backdrop for the following photos. So here we go with some examples of how a picture looks when taken at different EV values, ranging from 0.0 in Fig. 23 up to +0.1 in Fig. 26. Fig. 27 is back at 0.0 and Fig. 28 to 30 are minus steps increasingly dark. Click on photos to enlarge. Sorry I see that the Fig. numbers are only visible when you click on the below photos to enlarge them. The first and the fifth are without an EV adjustment. You can read the EV value in the clicked enlargements. (I do love those dark ones!) I just went outside and took some examples with our clerodendrom which was still in partial sunlight. I started with the first example without using any Exposure Compensation and took samples at different minus values of EV. I didn't include them all here but with these five you can see the difference between no adjustment in the first and six steps in the minus scale to -2.0, which is a little too dark. However I do like the effect at -1.0 and -1.3. All photos on this page were taken using the PORTRAIT setting in the SCENE option. Remember that the icon for portrait is a girl's head. The indoor photos had a WHITE BALANCE setting of "cloudy". I hope you will be able to give some of these options a tryout. You can do a lot to correct lighting when using automatic settings by making an adjustment with the EV function. I have the next chapter ready but I think this is enough for one day. It is a fun one....how to use a paper sweep for seamless backgrounds. Really easy! Please ask if anything isn't clear. If I know the answer I'll be back with a reply. Until then, thanks for joining me. I'll be uploading the next instalment soon. And please feel free to save the pages on your computer. Sharon (Canarybird) (All text and photos copyrighted) Free for personal, non-commercial use Follow-Up Postings: o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 3 - Lighten or Darken Photos with EV clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by loves2cook4six (My Page) on Wed, Jul 22, 09 at 17:13 Sharon THANK YOU for these great tutorials. We are on vacation but I hope to do some experimenting with my camera's settings. I've been to scared to move off AUTO but you are inspiring me to take some "risks" lol o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 3 - Lighten or Darken Photos with EV clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by canarybird (My Page) on Thu, Jul 23, 09 at 5:34 You're welcome loves2cook and I hope you will also try new settings while taking some vacation photos as well. Have a good rest of your holiday! SharonCb o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 3 - Lighten or Darken Photos with EV clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by shaun (My Page) on Fri, Jul 24, 09 at 22:20 Thank you!!!!! o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 3 - Lighten or Darken Photos with EV clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by momto4kids (My Page) on Wed, Jul 29, 09 at 10:21 Sharon, Just when I thought I'd have time to be a regular at CF again...my time gets zapped up so quickly. I wanted you to know I am thoroughly enjoying these posts! I am having a great time figuring out what you're saying with my own camera. My pictures have already improved remarkably. I've been begging (okay, whining) to take some classes and they just aren't to be found around here. Your tutorials are just what I need! Thank you for all your time! Deb

Posted by canarybird (My Page) on Wed, Aug 12, 09 at 11:45 Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Making a Mini Light Box Hi again everyone. I'm back with another entry on how to use your digital camera for taking tabletop photos. This time I'm going to show how to make a miniature version of a light box, which can be useful for photographing small objects. I'm also working on making a full sized box out of a cardboard printer box which will be used for photographing larger objects, including plates and dishes of food. Mini box (left) Full size box under construction (right) But it might be easier to practise with a mini box to test your results and your skills with a box cutter or sharp scissors. If you have a handy teenager, (or other person clever with crafts and model building, who won't cut off a finger with the box cutter) you may enlist some help with this although it takes less than an hour to make, requires no special skills and doesn't have to be good looking. The idea of a light box is to create a partially enclosed 'white room', with white walls, a white sweep (that paper background we made previously in Part 4 - Seamless Backgrounds), with cutout windows and ceiling covered with white paper, into which we project a strong overhead light and usually a light on either side aimed at the white paper windows so that any object introduced into the box will be bathed in total white light with no shadows. You will have often seen pictures on the web of an object which seems to float on a pure white background. Eg: Cook's Thesaurus. This effect can be achieved in a light box. And it's quite entertaining to see what you can produce from this setup. These last two pictures were taken with my 15 watt CFL desk lamp overhead and one 7 watt CFL spot lamp (that green one) at the left window. Even better would be a 2nd spot pointing at the right window. (I need to go out and buy that 2nd spot lamp...they cost about $12 here so not an expensive item and good for the mini box.) Construction of the Mini Box: Materials needed: small box of sturdy cardboard, box cutter or small sharp scissors, ruler or metal straight edge, pen, glue stick, white paper (I always seem to use printer paper.) I used a small box measuring 5.25 x 7 inches (13.5 x 18 cm) that contained a little desk lamp. You can use a larger box as well of course, but your lights will have to be accordingly more powerful. And I think it's better that you keep it as a vertical box, higher than wider, so that the lid opening will be your ceiling. We can still make the bigger box later once we have caught the idea of how best to create the whitest environment. On my little box I took off the top flaps of the lid and using a box cutter, cut out windows on the sides, leaving a frame of cardboard about 1 inch (2.5 cm) all around, except for the bottom edge of the front 'door' which I cut off. Then I took white printer paper and after cutting it to the size of one side (5.25 x 7 inches/ 13.5 x 18 cm) glued it with a glue stick into the INSIDE of a window side, then repeated that on the inside of the window facing it. Glue carefully and smooth out any wrinkles, which would show up in your photos. To further cover the edges, cut out strips of white paper to size and overlap the newly installed white paper to the back wall and the floor, smoothing carefully so the edges are well stuck down and wrinkle free. Do this on both window sides. Cut a paper sweep to go inside your box, but DON"T GLUE it in, just slide it in so it is removable when it becomes spotted . The measurements should be....width a little smaller than the width of your box. In my example, with a 5.25 inch (13.5 cm) box width, my paper sweep was perfect at 1/4 inch less than the box width...that is at 5 inches wide (11.5 cm). Length of the sweep:....start with a piece of paper a little shorter than the box height plus the box depth (from back wall to front door) and slip it into place until it reaches the edges of the door, as in the photo below. Check that you have a nice curve in the sweep, that it reaches the 'front door' and trim off any excess that sticks up over the top at the back. The finished box should look something like this. Many light boxes also use a thin sheet of paper...often white tissue paper or white tracing paper over the 'roof' of the box and this will give you a soft diffused light. If you are going to photograph any reflective item of metal, ceramic or glass you won't want a reflection of the light bulb in the top lamp showing on your object, so you should then use a thin white material or paper to soften the white glare. If you have a good strong light on both top and sides you will be okay with the diffusor on top as the light will be sufficient. If the light is too strong, then move the lamps away a little from the box. Some examples with fruit: First a sideview of the setup and one example of creating a very soft photo using Exposure Compensation (EV +1.3)... that's 4 clicks up from 0.0... to give deliberate over exposure. Here I was able to get photos using just the overhead desk lamp. If you don't have extra lamps (they must all have the same type of bulb...tungsten or CFL, not mixed) see how you can do with the overhead lamp close to the top opening of your box and raising the EV value to make the picture lighter. This you can do while looking through the viewfinder before taking the photo. A little less raising of the Exposure Compensation, that is.... pushing it up 3 clicks (instead of 4) to EV +1.0, makes the image a little less over exposed and more defined (left photo). With no EV changes to the picture, you would have a normal exposure, as in the second photo. Now you know how to make misty white photos if you wish to have that effect. When you raise the EV value using the plus+, you are actually decreasing the shutter speed of your camera, so it stays open longer, lets in more light and gives you a more exposed (lighter) image. Conversely, when you lower the EV value using the minus -, you are in fact increasing the shutter speed, the shutter closes sooner, letting in less light and your image is darker. If you manage to make this mini light box, try using a PORTRAIT setting, and maybe add a click on the MACRO option as mentioned below. Remember to set the White Balance WB for the type of bulb you are using...hopefully you have a CFL fluorescent in there, and practice using the EV button to lighten or darken your image while looking through the viewfinder. I think this is enough for one day but I did want to introduce MACRO, or closeup photography. If you look at the back your camera you will have noticed a little tulip icon somewhere on or near the round touchpad. That is your option to tell the camera that you want to make closeup photos. You should be able to click on it from any of the other options that you have, such as AUTO, PORTRAIT, INDOOR. By clicking on the tulip icon you will probably bring up three options: OFF, the tulip icon representing MACRO, or another tulip icon with a small 's' beside it. Some point and shoot cameras may not have this second tulip but it refers to SUPER MACRO where you can get even closer to your subject. Try it out....remember you can still be in another mode and add the macro option. I'll explain more next time with examples of how you can capture very close, sharp pictures of food, insects and plants. I hope you are understanding it all and if you have questions please ask here or PM me. So thanks for joining me. I'll be uploading the next installment soon. And please feel free to save the pages on your computer. Sharon (Canarybird) :-) (All text and photos copyrighted) Free for personal, non-commercial use Follow-Up Postings: o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Mini Light Box & Macro clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by loves2cook4six (My Page) on Wed, Aug 12, 09 at 22:36 Ahh Sharon. THANK YOU!! When will the book be published :) I'm going to be the first to buy it! o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Mini Light Box & Macro clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by ntt_hou (My Page) on Sun, Aug 16, 09 at 20:25 Wow, I learned more in these 6 parts than some photography books I have. Thank you so much !!! o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Mini Light Box & Macro clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by antiquesilver (My Page) on Mon, Aug 17, 09 at 19:32 Ditto to what ntt_hou said! And now I'm going to make a light box so I can photograph my silver. Your instructions are great. Thanks for taking the time to do this. Hester o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Mini Light Box & Macro clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by canarybird (My Page) on Mon, Aug 17, 09 at 19:56 Thank you again for your comments! They are appreciated. I'm looking forward to seeing your results. Hester I'm sure your silver will look beautiful in a light box! SharonCb o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Mini Light Box & Macro clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by antiquesilver (My Page) on Sun, Aug 30, 09 at 0:38 Finally got around to semi-finishing my light box - WOW, what a difference! I gave it a quick trial run using an under counter light as an overhead with a thin cloth on top & a POS snake light on one side. I'm amazed that I got good shots without a tripod, although I know it will be necessary when I use a macro lense for the maker's mark photos. I didn't have time today for that, but wanted to thank you for taking time to enlighten all of us who aren't quite in the 21st century - at least photography-wise! Florentine Pie Server Florentine blade detail Florentine Shoulder detail o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Mini Light Box & Macro clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by canarybird (My Page) on Sun, Aug 30, 09 at 6:40 Lovely shots antiquesilver! The focusing looks good but you do need a stronger light to brighten up the images. Keep the thin cloth on top as you have done to avoid sharp reflections on the silver (beautiful piece by the way,) and raise the Exposure Compensation (EV) higher...start with +0.3, then +0.7, and +1.0, taking one or two shots at each and see how they turn out. You would need a tripod as changing the Exposure Compensation will probably slow the shutter speed, opening up the possibility of camera shake. I would also check the ISO setting if you can do that. Perhaps that's not possible if you are using an automatic setting. Raising the ISO increases the camera sensor's sensitivity to light, so a higher number makes the photo brighter. (Same as when using film we could buy ASA 100, 200 or 400 for different film speeds.) For sure you can change the ISO when in manual or semi-automatic modes, which show as M, A, S, or P on your mode dial. I'm so glad to see you are trying this out and showing your photos here! Keep going....you are doing well! SharonCb o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Mini Light Box & Macro clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by antiquesilver (My Page) on Mon, Aug 31, 09 at 15:06 I need to buy at least 1 more lamp but I wanted to try it out anyway & the difference (box vs. no box) is amazing even without the needed adjustments. Taking a decent photo of silver without glare, blur, & a tripod is no small feat so P&S is a small miracle! I did play with the EV but overexposure was a problem when going higher; maybe not so much overexposure as a loss of silver details - another problem w/silver. Yesterday, I realized the overhead light I used is halogen & I changed my setting to adjust for it & that got rid of the yellow tones. I can't remember if I can change the ISO in Portrait mode or not - I've found so many things on this camera that I didn't know were there, it's mindboggling! FYI - it's a Panasonic Lumix. o RE: Food Photo Tips: Part 6 - Mini Light Box & Macro clip this post email this post what is this? see most clipped and recent clippings * Posted by canarybird (My Page) on Wed, Sep 2, 09 at 18:01 Antiquesilver...I imagine that ISO is not changeable when in any semi automatic mode. The camera wants to do that for you so it will most likely be automatic. However you should be able to raise the EV just one notch up to +0.3, or get a stronger light bulb. Also try substituting the thin cloth with white tissue paper or tracing paper. The cloth might be cutting out too much light. I know what you mean about too strong a light blowing out the detail on the silver pieces. But keep experimenting to get the right combination of camera setting, light and diffusor. If you are interested in reading photography books, I can highly recommend this one "Light - Science & Magic. An Introduction to Photographic Lighting."" by Fil Hunter, Steven Biver, Paul Fuqua. There are detailed explanations of setting up tabletop lighting with a whole chapter dealing with how to photograph metal objects. You might want to have a look in your library or bookstores. The ISBN (I have the 3rd edition) is: ISBN-13:978-0-240-80819-2 , published by Focal Press. Tutorial number nine will be a few days late this week. Probably have it ready for the weekend since we had a lot to do this week, including rescuing our new cat from a neighbour's locked backyard LOL. (All turned out well there.) SharonCb