Cheap Mini Photo Portable Studio

I had several hours of free time during the Christmas holiday and I grabbed my camera and experimented on how to make a small item shot that looks decent, with a small/no budget. This exercise is pretty useful in real life if you are someone who put a lot of stuff on Ebay or online listing (ie. craigslist, etc).

The goal is to be portable, cheap, and quick - but also produces nicely lit object. I want a fairly soft light to create a nice even light. So, I am thinking either bounced light or diffused light. I went with diffused light, since it is easier to control the power that way.

So here are items that I used, which most if not all you can find in your house or buy cheaply:

• Parchment paper or wax paper. This is for the diffuser.
• Open cardboard box for creating a boxed controlled environment, cut out to attach the parchment paper (see setup shot for an example).
• A black or dark surface. Or glass/reflective surface will also work.
• A piece of blank white paper/carton to be a reflector.

I happen to have a black dining table that is a fairly smooth surface - so I used that as my surface. I put my box above the object, with another cut-out hole on the top of the box to let the light go through.

I setup my flash about 2-3 ft above the box facing down into the box. Attach the parchment paper on the cut-out hole to diffuse the light. Place the paper reflector inside the box on the other side of where the flash is.

Setup up the max sync speed on your camera and adjust your aperture to get a complete darkness exposure - this is for making sure that your only source light is your flash, not the dining room lamp, the sun, etc etc. Now turn on your flash and adjust the power of your flash to get a good exposure. Tweak the distance between your flash and the box as necessary, or add another layer of parchment paper if needed.

Here is my setup shot:

Learn How To Light via Strobist
Overpowering The Ambient

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How to Do Sharpening in Photoshop

Why do we need "sharpening"? Well, you actually don't. But, given 2 identical photos, you will see that the one that is sharpened will be able to identify that it seems to be better focused and "sharp". This, a lot of times enhance the photographic viewing experience and create a more detailed perception of the picture.

Let's look at an example:
Original photo (cropped)


Here is the same image after sharpening (and color correction)
Pay attention to the pointy tip of the flower and the creases - and you can see a lot more if you view large (by clicking on the images).

The sharpening technique I used is called "edge sharpening". There are a lot of variety and settings that people use for this kind of sharpening (click here for Google search result for "edge sharpening"). There are other types of sharpening, lab-sharpening or just plainly using the unsharp mask. I am not going to discuss those methods in this post, but only going to focus on edge-sharpening.

Here is the step-by-step process that I usually take (you can make this into an action if you want) - I am using Photoshop CS and I am assuming that it will be similar in the newer versions:

1. Open you image, crop, adjust levels, curve, etc etc.
2. Create a new channel: Go to channel palette, click the new channel icon on the bottom. Put a name on your channel, call it "Sharp Channel" (or whatever you want). In PS CS, it will create a new channel and focus on this new channel (black screen/image). Still on the channel palette, click on the RGB channel to focus back on your image.
3. Select the whole image (Ctrl-A or do SELECT - ALL), and then copy the whole image (EDIT - COPY or EDIT - COPY MERGE)
4. Paste it on the new channel "Sharp Channel": select the "Sharp Channel" and then paste (EDIT - PASTE). It will display as black and white, which is OK.
5. Find edges: Make sure the "Sharp Channel" is focused/selected, and then click FILTER - STYLIZE - FIND EDGES
6. Eventually we are going to make this as a mask. So that means that the black part will affect your image and the white area won't. If you are pretty satisfied with the mask (it is hard to say what is a "good" one at this point - you will just have to experiment), you can skip step 7 and go to step 9 directly. I usually (9 out of 10) always do step 7 & 8 ...
7. Click IMAGE - ADJUSTMENTS - LEVELS. Try to adjust the levels by moving the triangular slide below the histogram. You basically want to make black to be very black and white to be white. Keep in mind that once we convert this channel into a mask, the black area are the one that will be sharpened. Play with this (unfortunately with trial and error) until you get the desired effect.
8. If there are details, lots of lines, etc, you may want to introduce a nice smoot transition from the sharpened area to the non-sharpened area. Use Gaussian Blur to do this: FILTER - BLUR - GAUSSIAN BLUR (enter between 1-5 px).
9. Now click SELECT - LOAD SELECTION. A dialog box will show up and make sure the selected channel is correct and "INVERT" checkbox is checked. Hit OK.
10. Click "Layers" (you were on "Channels"). The mask from our edge will be super-imposed on our image. You can hide this "blinking selection" by doing this: click VIEW - SHOW - and uncheck SHOW SELECTION.
11. Now we are ready for sharpening. It is usually helpful to view the image in large view/zoomed in. I would go for 100% zoom/view before start sharpening - so I can see/preview the affect of the sharpening. Click FILTER - SHARPEN - UNSHARP MASK. Try out combination of values in the USM window until you get the desired result. I recommend to keep the threshold to 0 and the radius to be less than 1.5.

There you go - good luck!
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Backlighting & Overpowering Ambient

The shot above was taken on a sunny day light in my living room - how did I do it? Check out the rest of the post.

First of all - I backlit the leaf
What does that mean? It means I use a light source (a Nikon SB-600 flash) and that light source is located behind the object (the leaf). This means that the object is sandwiched between me (and the camera) and the light source. Your light source could be anything: the sun, desk lamp, flash light, TV, etc. I just happen to use my Nikon flash - plus it provides a strong enough light to overpower the ambient light - which brings us to the second point.

Secondly - overpowering the ambient
What is "ambient light"? It is the light that is around you in your current condition. So in this case, my ambient light was sun-light coming through from some windows in my house as well as the kitchen light from my left.

What does "over-powering" the ambient mean? It means that I use an external light source (my Nikon flash) to be the primary light source and rendering the ambient light to be secondary light source or to be non-existent. In this case - I want the light coming out of my flash to be the ONLY light captured by my camera in lighting the leaf and I want the background to be dark (black or close to it). So my flash needs to be my primary light source and I need to render the ambient light into close to non-existent in the final picture - thus "overpowering the ambient".

OK then - how do you overpower the ambient? It is actually quite simple: I close down the exposure enough so that when I take a picture without flash it becomes dark/black. There are a lot of combinations you can use to accomplish this among shutter speed, aperture, and ISO setting. I picked ISO 100, 1/320 and f/11. I want to close down the aperture enough to capture the detail of the leaf and since I am handholding a 200mm lens, I want high enough shutter speed (more than 1/200s) . So that means low ISO, high speed, and closed down aperture - hence I selection.

After that, I position my flash behind the leaf, put it into High-FP mode (which enable the flash to work with shutter speed higher than normal sync-speed) and put it in 1/4 power and do a test fire. Adjust the position of the flash and adjust power to 1/2 and VOILA!

I did some post-processing with the image produced: cropping (I actually captured the whole leaf), sharpening (to strengthen the detail), and manipulate the color of the leaf a little bit (it was originally yellow/orange).

I use Nikon D80 camera, Nikkor AF-S 70-200 f/2.8 VR lens, and SB-600 flash.
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Photography as a Hobby

I am a serious hobbyist in photography. From my days in high school with film, until now in the digital era - photography has been a nagging interest in my life. For a certain period of time, it's virtually missing in my life - because of a simple reason: my camera was stolen. Since that point, for about 4 years, I did not own a camera - until my dad bought my wife and I a Nikon D70.

Holding the camera and pressing the shutter button triggered the journalistic memory from my high school and early college days. My film camera was a Nikon and the D70 that we had still use the same lens mount (it is called F-mount for Nikon). When I got a chance, I took all my old lenses and tried it and they worked!

Nikon vs. Canon
I am a little bit biased to Nikon because I owned Nikon equipments, including some of my old gears from the film days. Ultimately, they are a matter of preferences and your legacy equipments. So when you are already invested in Canon gears, it makes sense to continue on that route, same thing if you are in Nikon. If you are already invested in a brand, it is quite costly to switch - and this alone (depending on your seriousness level in photography) will be a strong cause to NOT switch brand.

I like Nikon bodies, their ergonomics, single functioning dedicated buttons, sub-command dials, shutter placement, etc. On the other hand, Canon is a step ahead in lenses variety. For 70-200mm alone, Canon provides 4 varieties (70-200 f/2.8 L USM IS and non-IS, 70-200 f/4 L USM IS and non-IS) with their price differences while Nikon only provides 1 model (70-200 f/2.8 AF-S VR). Nikon on the other hand is way ahead on lighting/flash technology.

Each brand also has bodies that range from early beginner up to the pro model (from $450 to $8K). So take your pick and stick with it. People ask me all the time about this and usually my answer is for them to try them out and pick for themselves. One benefit if you going with Nikon if you are my closer friends is that you can borrow my lenses and other Nikon equipment.

Crop Sensor
Most digital SLR now have crop sensor. What that means is that the sensor area is smaller then the area of a regular 35mm film. If the sensor area is the same as 35mm film, we call it "full frame" sensor - this usually only applied in the highest model line (Nikon D3, Canon 1Ds, etc) or close to highest (Nikon D700, Canon 5D). The smaller sensor area means that there is a crop factor in comparison to the 35mm area. For Nikon, the crop factor is 1.5 and for Canon is 1.3 or 1.6 (depending on the model). Crop factor 1.5 means that the digital sensor is 1.5 times smaller in area compared to 35mm film.

There are several implications to this factor:

• Wide is no longer wide. Since there is a crop, what used to be wide angle shot become not so wide anymore. Camera with crop sensor requires a WIDER lens to achive 35mm film/full-frame sensor width. So if you use a 20mm lens in a camera body with crop sensor, it will produce the similar result as if you are using a 35mm lens on a full-frame camera. 35mm = 1.5 * 20mm. To accommodate the need for wide angle shot, lens manufacturer create lenses especially for crop sensor that is super wide - but cannot be used in full-frame camera (or it will produce a fall-off or vignette).


• On the other hand, a 200mm tele lens becomes a 300mm tele lens in a crop sensor camera! So in a way, crop sensor body provides more reach.

Lens line up
So what is a good lens line up that spans from wide angle to tele for hobbyist? There are virtually endless possibilities, but I will try to provide several options based on budget. A good line up usually spans from ultra-wide (20mm or wider) to tele (200mm). In daily usage, it is rare you will need beyond this range.

OK, here we go - I am going with Nikon in most cases btw, if you want Canon, there are equivalent lenses - Google it!

1. Going SUPER EASY - crop factor (DX) - 1 lens fits all
• Nikkor AF-S 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 VR - $650
2. Going SUPER CHEAP (< $350) - crop factor (DX) - 2 lenses
• Nikkor AF-S 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 DX - $110 ($170 if get the VR)
• Nikkor AF-S 55-200 f/4.5-5.6 DX - $170 ($220 if VR)
3. Going CHEAP (< $500) - crop factor (DX) - 2 lenses
• Nikkor AF-S 18-70 f/3.5-5.6 DX - $250 (NO VR)
• Nikkor AF-S 55-200 f/4.5-5.6 DX - $170 ($220 if VR)
4. Going COMPROMISED (< $750) - crop factor (DX) - 2 lenses
• Nikkor AF-S 16-85 f/3.5-5.6 DX VR - $580
• Nikkor AF-S 55-200 f/4.5-5.6 DX VR - $220
5. Going QUALITY (~ $1,000) - crop factor (DX) - 2 lenses
• Nikkor AF-S 16-85 f/3.5-5.6 DX VR - $560
• Nikkor AF-S 70-300 f/4.5-5.6 VR - $460
6. Going PRO ($$$) - DX or FX - 3 lenses
• Nikkor AF-S 14-24 f/2.8 - $1,600
• Nikkor AF-S 24-70 f/2.8 - $1,600
• Nikkor AF-S 70-200 f/2.8 VR - $1,600

Obviously, this list is not exhaustive. There are more possibilities out there. Configure your own from this list!

If you are into MACRO, you want to get a MACRO lens, OR ... a reversing ring, so that you can use your PRIME wide angle or normal lens in reverse to get a magnification close to a MACRO lens (or maybe more - depending on how you configure it).

Currently, have quite a line up:

• Sigma 10-20 f/4-5.6 DX - since I am using a crop factor camera, this is my ultra wide angle lens (equiv to 15-35 in full frame or 35mm format)
• Nikkor AF-S 17-35 f/2.8
• AF-D 50mm f/1.4
• AF-S 70-200 f/2.8 VR
• AF-S 18-200 f/3.5-5.6 VR - my walkabout and daily lens

In this line up, I am still missing the normal zoom range - so I probably going to get AF-S 24-70 f/2.8 in the near future (or when I can finance it).

There you go! Photography hobby is not cheap - so buy only what is necessary and flee from trying acquiring the latest greatest every time, because it is a never-ending buying process if you allow it to be so. Photography can be very satisfying and if you are really good, you can make money of it too! Here are some of my photos:

• Flickr
• Picasa

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