Focus issues

[BobRad]

I'm just starting to take pen photos and am having no end of problems.

First I just want to understand why I'm having focus problems in these photos (yes there are lots of other problems)

Pen was in a cub tent which is supposed to have bulbs at the side, but I can't find the proper bulbs. So I have a quartz halogen high power photo light pointing directly down and about 3 feet above the pen with the top of the tent diffusing it.

Using a Nikon D70s on a tripod pointing down at about 45 degrees - all settings auto using the close up program.

The pen is lying on a piece of grey fabric that comes out brown in the photo. I can use autocolor in photo shop and that gets fixed

First photo is 1/100 at f5.0 -- second is 1/80 at f 4.5

in the second the right end of the pen is out of focus, but it seems to me I have enough depth of field even though the pen is at an angle.

 

[jttheclockman]

I will let the experts talk you through the technical things but you already know you need more lighting from the sides. Also when taking a picture of the pen, fill the frame with the pen and skip the background stuff. Also being you are shooting from the top, drop down abit more and shoot from about a 45 degree angle. One other thing if you are not going to use a prop then still angle the tip of the pen toward us. It will add depth to the pen instead of looking like a flat object. I shoot in macro mode and also use the timer function because even though you have the camera on a tripod you will get movement when hitting the shutter button. This can cause a blur. Good luck and like I said there will be the photo experts who can help with all that f-stops and lights. I point and shoot in auto mode and happy with my photos. I do need to start experimenting with different backgrounds again though. Here is an example. My photo is about the same size as yours and see the difference???

 

[Willee]

First ... get your pen up and off the background material.

Your f stop is too low. (narrow depth of field)
Use f11 or higher to get a deeper depth of field.
Use manual aperture set to f11 and let the camera set the shutter speed.

If the lens has a macro setting ... try it.

Spend an evening playing around with your lights ... they are what "paints" your pictures.
Use a third spot inside the tent for highlight (play around)


On a tripod you do not need a fast shutter speed.
1/60 of a sec should be plenty fast ... if you use a shutter trip cable.

Here is a photo taken outside on a patio table.
You dont need fancy lighting ... just enough of it.

 

[bitshird]

Where was your white balance set in the menu? that would seem like the problem with the color shift of the background.

 

[glycerine]

I'm just starting to take pen photos and am having no end of problems.

First I just want to understand why I'm having focus problems in these photos (yes there are lots of other problems)

Pen was in a cub tent which is supposed to have bulbs at the side, but I can't find the proper bulbs. So I have a quartz halogen high power photo light pointing directly down and about 3 feet above the pen with the top of the tent diffusing it.

Using a Nikon D70s on a tripod pointing down at about 45 degrees - all settings auto using the close up program.

The pen is lying on a piece of grey fabric that comes out brown in the photo. I can use autocolor in photo shop and that gets fixed

First photo is 1/100 at f5.0 -- second is 1/80 at f 4.5

in the second the right end of the pen is out of focus, but it seems to me I have enough depth of field even though the pen is at an angle.

Are you setting this manually, or is it on auto? As Willie said, if the depth of field is an issue, close the aperture more (LARGE NUMBER means smaller hole).
If that's NOT the issue, then maybe there's an issue with your lens.

 

[toddlajoie]

Lots of great advice here. Based on some of what you said in your original post regarding type of lights, there are no real "proper" bulbs in the digital age. Any light bulbs will have a color temperature (rated in degrees Kelvin or K) that they are rated at and your D70 should be able to balance very closely to it using either one of the default settings (cloudy, incandescent, florescent, etc) or the direct Kelvin temperature setting, but for pen photos, the auto setting will rarely be even close (better yet, learn to shoot in RAW mode and deal with color balance after the fact, but that is a longer discussion). The main thing is pick a type of light and use only that type. Halogen floodlights are great, bright, and cheap, so buy a few more of them, and play around with their positions and distance from the tent. Just be aware that they have some significant dips in the output of certain frequencies between red and blue (the lights just don't make as much of a certain range of colors as they do everything else) and this can often cause purple colors to appear a bit darker than expected. The D70's that we had often tended to be a bit on the warm/yellow end, in a way that could not be entirely corrected, which and accentuate the lack of purple spectrum, but you should be able to get a lot closer than you are currently.

All the previous suggestions, higher aperture, longer exposure, tripod, self timer or cable release are spot on, and looking around at photos on here and visualizing how they were set up will teach you many things (look at the carbon fiber pen, and try to imagine where the camera is in relationship to the pen, and the table. Distance is always a wild card, since the lens can make that difficult to tell, but the elevation and angle of the camera in relation to the pen and the surface, you'll get an idea of how to get the perspective of your pens to match the photos you like to see.

 

[BobRad]

I'm exploring all the options, and that will take a few days, but I just wanted to add that I always shoot RAW+jpeg and then run the RAW through Bibble and then move to Photoshop, and extract a jpg from there. That does 90% of the time, correct the color discrepencies = grey vs. brown- but I would rather get things more correct to start with and not rely on digital fixups

I still think 35mm had a lot of benefits in forcing you to think more before clicking. In fact this whole exercise might be simply with it, since I have better ways to shoot macro in 35, extension bellows, close up lenses, etc. - but then I would have to wait and pay for develop and scans.

Your comment about "pick one light type" is well taken and I only learnt that this morning, when I went into my camera store to get something on my camera checked and was chatting with the sales guy there.