Ethnographic Arms & Armour - Photographing weapons

Ethnographic Arms & Armour (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/index.php)

- Ethnographic Weapons (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/forumdisplay.php?f=2)

- - Photographing weapons - the details (http://www.vikingsword.com/vb/showthread.php?t=10581)

A way of getting good reflections is, I have been told but never tried it myself, is to take some Alu-foil and crap it, then stretch it a bit, and point the light towards the foil. Due to all the facet’s you now have, the light will spread and not be direct.

A friend just sent me some pictures taken in a museum, and they were rather good. What he did was to place the camera lines on the glass and then focus on the object.

I was just chatting with a friend who's a professional photographer.

His tip to me in photographing a sword (and so that the flash will not create a bright glare on the blade) is as follows --

1. use a cable to remotely place the flash, i.e., on the right (or left) side of the sword;

2. then place an (upright) piece of white paper or cardboard on the opposite side;

3. experiment with the various combination of the lens opening and shutter speed;

4. frame the shot so that there's a liberal amount of empty space to the left and to the right of the sword (will come handy when editing the image digitally later); and

5. to err on the side of caution, it's better to have slightly darker photos than brighter ones (slightly darker photos lend themselves better to digital editing).

I'll certainly try the above setup one of these days.

Then another friend said that rather than buying an expensive macro lens (for photographing details), it's better to just buy a cheap point-and-shoot camera with good macro capabilities.

I get pretty good close ups with my 6 meg. Fuji point and shoot .
There is no flash at the macro setting so extra light must be provided .

What you can often learn a great deal of is, if you take details. You will often see things, which you have not seen at first.