eBay product photography tip – use the bath!

Product shot taken in the bath with bounced ceiling flash used to sell the product on eBay.

A couple of weeks ago I took a trip to the coast with a view to get some long exposure seascapes but instead ended up fishing my camera, lens and filters out of the sea following a strong gale and a rogue wave! Fortunately my camera and filters survived but my lens ended up in three separate pieces.

Once I’d got over it all, I decided to try my luck with it on eBay; I know there are many people around that enjoy fixing things up and then selling them on for profit and as it turned out, I got almost £25 for a completely broken 50mm f/1.8 lens.

Anyway, back in the day I used to do a lot of eBaying and I quickly learned that you needed to create clear and pleasing images of the item that you were selling in order to get maximum bids. Specifically I was looking at buying a light tent and a couple of lamps but all that would have cost a small fortune and I didn’t really have that much room or time to set it all up every time. I tried all kinds of things like using paper or white towels etc but I could never really get crisp white backgrounds with soft shadows, they often ended up looking a bit of a mess or including some of the background into them and took ages to set up just right.

So being lazy I looked for a similar surface and I ended up in the bathroom, although at one point I think I was looking at using the fridge! I noticed that the bath seemed ideal since all of the surfaces are white and firing off a couple of test shots it was quickly confirmed that I could quickly achieve the type of shot that I was after. Initially, I was using Photoshop to enhance the background by increasing the brightness which isolated the objects quite nicely but did take quite a while to do for every photo. So I employed the use of a flash which made the whole process much easier. By bouncing the flash off of the ceiling it increases the overall brightness creating just the right amount of contrast and the beauty of it is that you don’t need to do so much post processing!

Hopefully it’ll save you some time as well as improve your product photo’s used for eBay and who know’s it may even lessen some of the usual hassle such as the dreaded ‘item not as described’ message that rears it’s somewhat ugly head every now and then! Give it a try!

Light Painting Cars: How to part 2

As many of you will know, I have undertaken a personal project to learn how to light paint cars and achieve that glossy, almost wet look with straight/smooth highlights and even exposures. I first wrote about this technique in another post (How to paint cars with light) almost a year ago now and while that provided some good information for those wanting to attempt this technique, it was hardly refined at that point so probably covers much of what most photographers already know about light painting.

In the past year I have spent hours and hours trying to work out how other photographers achieve those glossy type highlights on their cars, while maintaining an even exposure etc. As I explained in a recent Flickr post, almost unbelievably, some of the answer came to me in a dream and I was able to put two and two together to achieve what I have been trying to get for some time now. Before I went to bed that night though, I was looking at some photo’s from a couple of Flickr contacts streams, namely Andrew Whyte and Damian Hock who have both perfected this technique beyond distinction and are well respected in this area. I then looked back at my previous post regarding light painting and realised that those highlights were in actual fact in my image, but they were just very messy and I have been attempting to light the entire car in a single exposure!

LED Work Lamp

I had figured out that multiple exposures were the way forward quite some time ago now, but I’ve still not been able to produce the highlights in the way that I wanted. I’d since changed my light source based on research to a small single LED torch and while that was sort of working, it just wasn’t what I expected or wanted. So looking back at my previous shots, I reverted back to my LED work lampwhich comprises of 72 ultra bright LEDs, a magnet and a hanging hook which all come in handy when composing shots initially.

The good thing about the work lamp is it’s shape (which is quite obviously rectangular). This means that by twisting the lamp, you can control the spread of light and therefore the size of the highlights; by using the lamp horizontally, you keep the highlight small/narrow and you can move fast, while using the lamp vertically the highlight is larger but you need to move slower.

Now when painting a car you can shoot many different exposures based on the number of surfaces visible and/or the angle of the camera but for the purposes of this article I will base the exposures on a recent Flickr post as per below:

Light Painted BMW 1 Series

The three fundamental exposures that I produced for the image above were as follows:

1. Side highlight exposure
2. Top/roof highlight exposure
3. Base light paint exposure

Exposure 1 – Side highlight exposure

This is the first exposure that I took capturing the highlights on the side of the car

For the first exposure, I set the camera to a 15 second exposure (at around f/8 on the Canon 10-22mm) and fired off a shot, I then walked with the LED work lamp pointing at the body work, maintaining an even distance (around 3 ft) from off camera left and continued on with the lamp until I was off camera on the right. Maintaining the same hight from the floor is also important in order to keep the highlight looking straight and consistent. In hindsight, I wished I had angled the work lamp slightly diagonally for the side panel in order to keep the highlight in the same perspective with the top/roof highlights. It’s important to note that this is just a ‘single’ swipe of the work lamp, no doubling back or waving it around like a lunatic! Simply run the light from one end to the other.

Please note that in order to get this I had to work out where the light was reflecting so it wasn’t instant, I did a whole bunch of test shots to work out how to get the highlight and this is an area that I can’t help with since it really depends on the body shape of the vehicle. Depending on where you place the camera, you may also need to continue way beyond the car itself to get the highlights to appear consistent.

Exposure 2 – Top/roof highlight exposure

Top/Roof Highlights

For the second exposure I concentrated on the roof highlights and again applied the same sort of method as the side exposure except this time I followed the contours of the car itself rather than a straight line. I also used the work lamp vertically to create a larger highlight, the reason for this is because the light is further away from the camera so it appears smaller, especially with a UWA lens. It’s also worth noting here that I walked behind the car from the left and pointed the light almost directly at the camera (which is why it appears in shot), although making sure to light the car. The exposure was again 15 seconds at f/8 with a single swipe of the LED lamp.

Exposure 3 – Base light paint exposure

Base exposure

Now for the base exposure I will admit, I took several of these just to ensure that I provided enough light for every panel on the car. For this step, I set the exposure time to 30 seconds and stood quite a way back from the car (around 2 meters) and then just went over the car to give it enough light for the camera to ‘see’ it in the dark. As you will notice in the frame to the right, the wheels in this exposure were not fully lit, so I did a separate one specifically for the wheels. But don’t do specifics, paint the whole car like you normally would, but just place more emphasis on the wheels, otherwise you’ll get dodgy contrasting effects. Remember you want even lighting! Notice the distinct lack of highlights in this image, you don’t want any for this exposure otherwise they will conflict with the ones you have purposely captured, the idea is to produce soft light from further away.

As part of the base exposure, you should also produce a ‘dark’ frame which is basically just letting the camera run for the same amount of time (30 seconds in this case) without doing any light painting and this will serve as a sort of background in the final step. If you notice in all the other frames, we have interference from the light source and ideally we want to get rid of that.

Final steps – Post processing

Once you have each of your exposures and you are happy with them, you’ll need to open them in Photoshop. In my case I eventually had around 10 exposures in total which I stacked in Photoshop. First of all the dark layer, then on top of that I applied the side exposure using ‘lighten’ as the layer ‘blend’ mode and the same again with the top/roof layer. I cleaned this up quite a bit though in Photoshop using layer masks to get rid of uneven lighting, artefacts and any unwanted light from the light source itself appearing in frame.

Unfortunately I can’t teach you how to use Photoshop but I have uploaded my PSD file for everyone to download which should provide some explanation, please note however that it is over 100mb!

I hope this article sheds some light (pun intended) on how to light paint a car! Let me know if it has helped, or if you think it could do with a little more information, I appreciate the odd comment or two!

How To: Headlights On!

Looking through peoples Flickr profiles and glossing over magazines etc, I often see images of cars with their lights on and I wondered how they did it; so I began my expirements using a torch as my subject.

If you have ever tried to take a photo of a torch when it is on, then you will quickly realise that it’s difficult (almost impossible) to capture with a single exposure. If you expose for the light, then everything else is dark and you can hardly see the torch, whereas if you expose for the torch itself then all you can see is glare! Really annoying then.

The trick is to use multiple exposures of the same object (you’ll need a tripod for this to keep the subject and the camera in the same position), to change the lighting conditions in your favour. So instead of trying to capture the torch with one photo, I used two. The first photo is an image of the torch when it is on, but exposed specifically for the light being emitted. This will result in most of the frame being black, but don’t worry we’ll get to that in a minute. The second image of the torch is with the torch off, it’s just a photo of a torch. I’ve provided some examples of this below:

It's important to note that we've changed the lighting conditions in the second exposure by switching the torch off.

Please note that your exposure settings will not be the same as my ones since the light conditions will be different (it appears I was working in quite a dark room) so you may need to adjust these to see what works best, but it shouldn’t be too far away if you’re doing this indoors.

Once you have your two exposures, open Photoshop and copy both files into a single document. Each image should have it’s own layer. Now we want to position exposure 1 (the dark image) over the top of exposure 2 (the torch). You should only be able to see the second exposure at this time. Now, in the layers palette there is a drop down (known as the blending mode) and it should read ‘Normal’. Select exposure 1 and then simply set the blend mode to ‘Lighten’ and you should already begin to see the fruits of your labour! Your layers palette should look similar to below:

Note you need to select layer 1, below changing the blend mode.

After some playing around with levels etc you should be able to master this technique and begin to use it more creatively. It can really help to bring every day objects to life!

Multiple exposures used on the car to do the lights and the lightpainting.

I hope this has been useful and good luck trying this technique yourself. I’d also love to hear about your own experiments!

Review: BG-E8 battery grip – 3rd party for the Canon 550D

Canon 550D with BG-E8 Battery Grip (3rd Party)

Last week I went on a short excursion around town to try a few new photography techniques out. It was a relatively clear day and consequently, the temperatures were dipping into minus figures particularly towards the evening.

I went to a number of different places and was experimenting with exposure bracketing with an isolated tree in a field, which I can’t seem to process in a way that is satisfactory. Still it was a learning experience, I guess you win some and you lose some!

Anyway from there I ventured to a nearby motorway bridge and took a couple of long exposure shots of the traffic and by this time my camera was beeping away at me to indicate that the battery was getting low. This was annoying because I also had another technique in mind that I wanted to try out. I wrote about this earlier on my blog, painting with light using an LED torch using my car as the subject.

A couple of long exposure shots later and the cold really setting in my battery was flatter than the salt plains of Bolivia! I made a decision right there to purchase a battery grip for the extra power and duration, it’s was a no brainer.

I took a quick look on Amazon and I was taken back a little by the price of the genuine Canon 550D battery grip – £110-£130! Wow! I decided to take a look on eBay for a second hand version and quickly learned that no second hand ones were for sale. I turned my gaze to the 3rd party offerings on eBay which are advertised at less than half price (£40) and they come with 2 batteries. I was a bit dubious at first about buying one of these because I’d heard bad press in forums and reviews etc particularly when certain members made a point about 3rd party electronics connecting to the camera body is never a good thing; this made me nervous.

I waited a couple of days and then had another search around the internet and I found a 3rd party version on Amazon which at last sported some good reviews! The cost was only £40 and you also get 2 3rd party batteries included. I just closed my eyes and did the 1-click checkout and awaited delivery.

A couple of days later I received a parcel and it was indeed my 3rd party BG-E8 battery grip (along with a laser pointer that I ordered around about the same time – which I’ll do a seperate article on).

The battery grip is manufactured by a company called Meike and from first impressions, the build quality is similar to the body which is good! The rubber around the grip is made of slightly different material to the body and is also a different colour; you’d never notice unless you looked really hard though. The material itself is alot more grippy than the rest of the body as it feels as though it is made of softer rubber. The grip comes with a cassette that is capable of using two LP-E8 batteries simultaneously (or one on it’s own) as well as another cassette that uses the usual AA batteries.

Connecting the grip is easy, although you need to fiddle around a little to remove the battery bay door from the body; once removed the grip fits nice and snug with no overhang or size issues. Once connected I looked at the buttons and controls which replicate the genuine BG-E8 grip exactly, the only difference is probably the ink which is used to print the icons for each of the buttons, the wheel for changing aperture or shutter speed also feels a little flimsy, but only marginally and again you’d never really notice unless you compared the genuine with the 3rd party directly. The only area that fails with the 3rd party BG-E8 is the on and off switch to enable the controls and it’s operation does feel a little ambiguous, I won’t be using this much as my type of photography allows me to use a cable release, so it’s not really an issue.

With the battery grip fitted and both batteries installed, obviously this does increase the weight but that’s a small price to pay if what you need is the additional battery life. I use a ball head with my tripod and the additional weight actually allows smoother manouverability. If you have friction control be sure to increase this as the last thing you need is the camera to fall straight onto the lens!

Overall the Canon 550D BG-E8 battery grip is a must have accessory if you’re thinking about getting serious with your photography and the 3rd party grip in my opinion is extra value for money and far exceeded my expectations; for £40 you really can’t go wrong, great piece of kit!

UPDATE: I originally purchased this grip for around £40, I’ve had it now for around 9 months and I am still very pleased with it, it’s been absolutely flawless. I did a recent search and noted that the price has since come down to around £25 and to me that is an absolute bargain! You can find the same one I purchased here on Amazon.

How to paint cars with light

Last week I posted an image on Flickr of my car that I’d ‘painted’ at night; see below:

After posting this shot I was asked by one of my contacts how this technique had been executed and that’s a good question if you’re thinking about reprodcuing something like this, or just using the technique to use on perhaps a completely different subject.

So in response to that question, first of all lets have a look at the kit you’ll need to take this type of photo.

1. A camera capable of taking a long exposure for at least 30 seconds however, bulb mode for this type of photography is much more practical. Exposing for anything less than 30 seconds will have you running around like some sort of pilled up raver and nobody needs that.
2. Once you have your camera, you need a car/subject to actually photograph. Cars are excellent for this type of photography because of the reflective materials that cars are constructed with, the light glistens and creates interesting highlights as it wraps around the metal curves and paint work.
3. A sturdy tripod is essential for this technique and is required for almost any kind of long exposure shooting.
4. An LED torch, now this is an area that is not particularly obvious because you can’t just use any LED torch, it needs to be of a substantial size in order to effectively light up your subject. I personally purchased my LED torch from ASDA (Wal-Mart) which can be found in the same isle as all the light bulbs and costs around £5.00. Failing that you can find a very similar one on amazon here. If you are not able to purchase one of these, to give you some sense of scale, these are around the same size as a standard Mag Light, the kind you see Police in America using.
5. A cable release or wireless remote is not essential but it does help to ensure that camera movement is totally minimized.
6. Finally, ok it’s not technically ‘kit’ but you will need to find somewhere particularly dark. Although the temperature of the LED light against the orange/yellow light of towns/cities in backdrops can make nice points of interest.

Once you have all of the kit, you’ll need to place the subject in front of the camera in such a way that will be visually appealing, for this photo I was really just testing the technique and I aim to perfect it later but I went for a front, side and roof shot. The camera was also slightly elevated on a bank so that I could almost peer down on the car and crop out some of the background.

In order to focus, I simply turned on my LED torch and set it against my car and then used my Live View focusing technique to obtain sharp focus using manual focus, zooming in on the small detail such as the number plate.

You should now have the shot set up, you’ll want to turn your torch off and then set your camera to bulb mode, or maximum exposure time and then take the shot. Now you’ll want to turn your torch back on and then start sweeping the subject with it to ensure that light hits all surfaces that you want to be lit. To ensure an even spread you’ll need to apply a smooth but brisk sweeping action and don’t forget to do the wheels or the roof!

Think of this step as a sort of primer base coating, this will just make your subject more visible against the dark background. In order to add the highlights you’ll need to move the torch in a bit closer this time, probably around 2-3ft and then just draw a line from the front of the car all the way back to the rear. You may need to get a bit artistic with this step and there isn’t really a right or wrong way to do it, it will also depend on the vehicles body lines. Fundementally though, you should be able to run the light along the same lines as as the body panels.

You may want to use the torch to light up other elements of the car such as the headlights, you can give it that sort of ‘HID/Xenon’ look if you get it right. For those that don’t know what this means, it’s basically a nice blue tint emitted from the headlights and many people will agree that this looks better than the standard halogen bulbs. Coincidently, this is also the same reason that we use an LED torch to paint with light, the colour temperature of the light is a little more natural in contrast to the yellow/warm look you receive from a standard halogen bulb.

Once you are happy with this step you can then stop the exposure, being careful not to point the torch at the camera at any time since this will leave a light trail on the cameras sensor which could block out some of the images detail.

I will be making some more examples of light painting and I will update this thread in the future so that it can be more easily interpreted in pictures rather than words.

I hope this helps!