'LGT' Construction Diary

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ShinOBIWAN said:

Why is it so hard to find a camera that takes decent domestic lighting shots?

It all depends on your lighting. If it is too flat it will show or if it there is too much contrast it will show. Another problem is with reflecting surfaces. You generally do not light them but you reflect lighting in them. It helps to have big reflecting panels (I know people do not have that sitting around) You could use styrofoam or two colored foamcore (black and white). Play with the angle where your reflecting surface and camera over the subject will form 90 degrees. Light your reflector card that should be 4 by 8 Ft or bigger. Play with reflector card position until it completely covers your subject. Than ideally light your card with falloff.
The other way of doing it is reflect your window on the surface by creating 90 degrees angle between camera surface and window.
Typical problem is if you are using window light from one side than you have too much contrast. In that case use panels to reflect light in dark areas, or use your flash ether reflected or in same cases direct in TTL mode and dial it down 1/3 or 2/3 Fstop if it allows that on your camera. The technic is called fill in flash.
Sometimes reflecting black in high polished areas helps a lot.
What you are trying to do is very often hard even for professional photographers - big dark reflective object. In studio conditions gets even worst because you would need to recreate everything - shadow, highlight, light reflection, fall off. Lets not mention dark fabric panels.
Avoid low lighting conditions and use lowest sensitivity settings - 100 ASA. CCD and CMOS chips develop noise in blue and green channel in low light or dark areas situation.
Your shots are great, do not worry. At the end use Photoshop.
:)
 
The problem with indoor lighting is usually placement (direct vs. diffuse, diffuse is usually better but difficult to acheive indoors with conventional lights) as the previous poster mentioned.

Light coming through a window is usually reflected light from various surfaces making it bright yet more diffuse. Objects in direct sunlight can be equally difficult to photograph thus the use of reflectors by the pros.

Another factor is light temperature which will affect the color. Sometimes digital cameras have corrective settings for this, often times they don't. In the old days people used filters and relied on the printer at the photo lab to correct things, Nowadays people rely on photoshop type programs.
 
flaevor said:
Another factor is light temperature which will affect the color.

Color temperature is usually corrected through the camera setting/software. On lower end cameras color is done automatically and on better ones manual setting is
possible ether through pre sets (dyalight, indor...) or through the gray balance.
In order to achieve best color you should avoid mixing light sources, such as daylight and incandescent, or fluorescent with any other light and so on. This rule is basic, general rule, but in photography there are almost no rules that are not to be broken. Sometimes you want to mix light sources just for that effect, like warm indor light mixed with late evening available light. But this is just for the effects, so take the above mentioned rule as your guidance for uniform color.
Correcting color in Photoshop or any other software is easy with uniform lighting - a.e. wormer-cooler or green - magenta ratio, but solving mixed lighting situation is impossible with global image controls.
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Wow chaps, thanks for the tips regarding camera/photography.

I was hoping there'd be a point and shoot camera available that comes close to the colour accuracy and shadow detail resolving power of the human eye in domestic light. The camera I use is a Sony DSC-T50 and isn't very good with anything other than daylight. The night modes (ISO1000 I believe) adds an insane amount of chroma noise. It does have colour temperature controls for various lighting types but they all tend to look either too warm or too cool with nothing that really matches what I'm seeing.

The PC is connected upto a Yamaha DPX1100 projector which I've had ISF calibrated to 6500k for home cinema viewing and another memory at 9000k for general PC use such as gaming, web browsing etc. The calibration guy said that 9000k is a good compromise for this general PC work.

The SLR's are much superior to what I'm using now but taking photo's of DIY related things is only a small part of what I use the camera for. When I'm out and about, on holiday or at some special occasion its very inconvenient to use a bulky SLR with huge optics.

I'm also not much good with image editing programs. I do use Corel PhotopaintX3 but the only thing I really know how to do is sharpen and resize images. Whenever I mess with the brightness to boost low light photo's they always look washed out and even worse than before.
 
"The SLR's are much superior to what I'm using now but taking photo's of DIY related things is only a small part of what I use the camera for. When I'm out and about, on holiday or at some special occasion its very inconvenient to use a bulky SLR with huge optics."

I've recently bought a digi SLR, following years of abusing Olympus gear, and its lighter, and slightly smaller than the manual with motor drive. I use it as much as the point and shoot we also have, and far more than when I was using film. Yes it is quite big, but its so much more flexible, that I could never easily go back (and I can adjust colour balance using an 18% gray scale card in the field. Saves on Photochopping).

Who knows I may take some piccies at the UK DIY Meet...


Owen
 
ShinOBIWAN said:

I was hoping there'd be a point and shoot camera available that comes close to the colour accuracy and shadow detail resolving power of the human eye in domestic light. T

We all have been waiting for that all this time.
:) :) :)

5000K - 5500K is American pre press white standard and 6000K in Europe. 9000K is way too blue. With certain monitors, projectors... it is impossible to lower color temperature from 9000K to anything else because they dramatically loose luminance and became too dim or low in contrast. In that case you are better off leaving them as is. Projectors screen color will influence total outcome, so if you project 9000K warmer screen will compensate. If you are capable of having lower temperature with regular screen I would not use 9000K for anything. At 9000K when you edit images (if you do that with projector) they will look good to you but for anyone else way too warm (your cool color of the screen will mask warm tones for your view) Anything else for you should display cooler than was intended.

Regarding camera, do not use night mode for exposure. Use tripod and longer exposure for indoor situation, and than manually set color balance for incandescent if that is your light source.

Regarding type of the camera at this point Canon is the leader and is creating havoc in professional market. Their non professional models are very good and I would strongly recommend them if you are in the market for SLR or non SLR camera. (Their software sucks, but there are many other softwares that you could use) I am not connected with Canon, just a user, when I am not shooting large or medium format, (with them, last 14 years I am Phase One digital back user ).

After all this talk, your images are coming out good and I wouldn't worry too much. If nothing else keep shooting with daylight.
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
AR2 said:
5000K - 5500K is American pre press white standard and 6000K in Europe. 9000K is way too blue. With certain monitors, projectors... it is impossible to lower color temperature from 9000K to anything else because they dramatically loose luminance and became too dim or low in contrast. In that case you are better off leaving them as is. Projectors screen color will influence total outcome, so if you project 9000K warmer screen will compensate. If you are capable of having lower temperature with regular screen I would not use 9000K for anything. At 9000K when you edit images (if you do that with projector) they will look good to you but for anyone else way too warm (your cool color of the screen will mask warm tones for your view) Anything else for you should display cooler than was intended.

The projector has 6 memories and each can store the whole range of image setup values. 6500k is perfect for movies but I like the blue push of 9000k for PC work since everything look cleaner and more sterile. He also setup the photo receptor at the screen.

Contrast ratio @ calibrated 6500k was nearly 4200:1 from peak white to black and gamma/greyscale was adjusted to about 2.1 if memory serves me.

The whole idea of the calibration was to set colour temp to the same movie industry standard so you see what they intended. Its not much use for accurate photo work to be sure.

BTW I used to use a tripod for night time domestic shots but the Sony has a steady shot function which averages a number of images and comes up with something that isn't anything like as blurred without it. So I've not felt the need to use a tripod since changing from the Fuji.
 
diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Whilst we're on the subject of camera's I've been reading the manual and through some experimenting have found settings that give a much more accurate colour representation. I was using the AUTO function before and it must be useless, instead I've changed to the PROGRAM function and you can adjust much more including colour temp, light source type, exposure and even what element within the picture you'd like to focus on - this is done by touching the screen and the camera automatically focuses on that. There's also a twilight enhancement function which boost shadow detail and makes colours more bold.

Overall I'm much more pleased with the results. I should have used this trail and error messing around before. You can clearly see the improvement in the images below.

I haven't just been busy with the camera. I screwed the base together and did the finishing on the tweeter cabinet today.

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And the here's a shot of the overall progress. You can see the top mid/bass cabinet is ready for final finishing and I plan to make a start on that tomorrow. The other speaker is far behind though, which reminds me; this is the last time I tackle a project of this magnitude, the work and time needed is testing to say the least.

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diyAudio Member
Joined 2004
Tenson said:
They look really amazing!

I know what you mean about doing the big projects. I always end up doing many smaller ones at the same time to keep me paced.

Cheers Simon.

I noticed you keep yourself busy with the smaller but still interesting projects. Good plan that since it keeps you fresh. I wouldn't mind doing that myself just to break things up a little. Actually I guess I have since there's some amps to build which will make a very welcome diversion from MDF dust, toxic paint fumes and arm ache from sanding and buffing. :)

BTW what's this big project you have going then? You always keep quiet about your stuff until your sat listening to it. From what I gather its a 3-way design with RAAL tweeter and Scan 12M mid, is that right? BTW don't mind me just fishing. :D
 
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