Old machine photos

Foil, or any metallic reflector, can produce hot spots. A large piece of white poster board works better. A trick for photographing reflective surfaces is to use a black sheet _in front of_ the subject, and shoot with the lens sticking through a hole in the sheet. In this way, you don't get your own reflection in the picture. Hair spray also works, but might be hard to clean off. Spray laundry starch might also work, but I haven't tried it. Watch for glare off chip surfaces, which can make part numbers unreadable. The trick is to have the light coming in at an angle that does not reflect into the lens. A common setup is two (or 4) lights, one on either side, at a 45 degree angle (with the camera perpendicular to the subject). In this way, the fall-off from the light on one side is balanced by the opposite fall-off of the light on the other side, so the illumination is even across the subject. For 3D objects, it is customary to have the (brightest) light coming from the upper left, so the shadows are on the lower right. Sean's last comment is a good one -- keep taking pictures until you get good ones. The only added cost is in your time, but then why take the time to produce a poor picture? -----Original Message----- From: Sean 'Captain Napalm' Conner [mailto:spc@conman.org] Sent: Saturday, January 11, 2003 10:03 PM To: cctalk(a)classiccmp.org Subject: Re: Old machine photos A large piece of cardboard covered in aluminum foil makes a good reflector, and to reduce glare on monitors you may want to try hairspray. Professional photographers use it to reduce glare on glasses so it might be worth trying on a monitor if you don't think it'll hurt it. <snip> If it's a digital camera, go wild with the pictures. Take lots of pictures; more than you think you need. Then select the best from the lot. Why not? It's not like you have to pay for developing the pictures. -spc (Go for quantity, then select for quality ... )