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Go Back   Spiritual Forums > Spirituality & Beliefs > Crystals & Gemstones

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Old 31-08-2015, 04:40 AM
8thsinner 8thsinner is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2015
Posts: 194
 
Photography guide

Here is a quick guide to how to photograph your stones.
A handy thing for identification and organization of names and such of all your stones.

First off, you do not need an slr or dslr to get a good shot. Some of my mobile phone shots have looked pretty nice in the past.
All you have to do is learn to control the light source you are using to get a god shot in most cases.
That being said, the better the camera the better the shot.

The main features you need are manual settings.

Manual iso, iso is light sensitivity, the lower the better. set to 80 or 100 if you can.

Manual shutter speed is essential for taking really long exposure shots which minimise light distortion for our purposes. will need adjusted based on light, but aim for 5-10 seconds exposure times.

F stops, amount of light let into camera. I have shot some of mine at f32, some at f5.6 It can really depend, I think mostly on reflection, if you can angle the stone with virtually no reflection higher f stops are often a better choice.

Macro mode, if not using a dslr type camera, macro mode is essential.
Get as close as the focus will allow.
Do not rely on zooming in from far away, especially if digital zoom only.


If you have a dslr type camera but no macro lens, you can get cheap options that can allow macro shots. Either hollow lens attachments which increae the distance from lens to sensor or add on lens attachments which optically zoom the image before it hits the lens. I use a cheap china set of hollow lens attachments as it was the cheapest option for me.

Tripod.
Absolutely essential, light weight is fine but you may need multiple shots to avoid floor vibration from passing cars.


Setting up your stones.
I shot all mine on my desk, under a slanted roof light in the afternoon when the sun is highest.
I shoot all my stones on white paper.
I use mirrors as additional light reflectors, tinfoil can work also.
You can use/make/buy a light box easily enough but I haven't needed to use that option just yet.

I have a sad lamp, 2400 lumen, but the frequency of light doesn't always aid in photography for me so far. I have used white led torches or spotlights successfully.

If you are getting too much light from a torch or spotlight, use a white sheet of cotton, or paper to dull it and spread the light out more.
The more spread out the light is the more natural the shot will be in the end.


Editting
There are many free programs with basic editting abilities, but honestly the cheapest options on the market right now are phone apps. Android have two in particular, Pixlr, which is free, and photo editor, which I think is free but if not only costs a small amount. Pixlr, is more effect based but has some nice basic adjustments, photoeditor is aiming to be more pf a photoshop clone than instagram type.

I use lightroom on the pc, which older versions can be picked up fairly cheaply and is easy to learn from youtube tutorials, Far more so than photoshop.

The features you need to really be able to edit are
White elements, this controls what white is actually white and helps to reduce light distortion due to temperatures and stuff.

Black elements, like above, controlling when the black is black.

Temperature and temperature tint for adjust the white balance of the over all shot. This can bring the colour elements back to normal too.

Highlights, ability to reduce highlights from reflections.

Shadows, on lower megapixel non dslr type cameras, shadows are usually worthless to try and adjust but it can be done if there isn't much noise.

Hue and saturation of each of the primary colours, can help you get the red looking just right or the green and such.

sharpness or clarity is another one, more important for stones with high texture detail, like cracks, or phantoms, pits, speckles etc.

Noise reduction should be carefully controlled, and too much can be a benefit in the case of smooth opaque colour changing crystals like fluorite, or amethyst.


That is all the features I really use for editting my images so far, there are a few more, but if you find free programs with these individual features you should be able to get nice clean white backgrounded crisp images at approaching professional levels.


I hope this helps a few people out.
Any questions, just ask
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Old 31-08-2015, 12:24 PM
StrandedSnowMonkey StrandedSnowMonkey is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2011
Posts: 3,892
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Thanks for all the tips

I use mtPaint ~ there's a sad lamp that I can test out...
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