Low-Tech Photography
This month I’d like to explore some of the craft, rather than the art, of photography.
In other words, making really useful rather than really pretty shots.
It occurred to me recently when replacing the sway bar bushings on my long-term
project 356, that there was a pretty good chance that I was not going to remember
just how things went together. In the past, I’ve either reassured myself that surely
I’d remember (bad idea), made a few notes (better, if you can find both paper and
pencil at the same time) or done a diagram (better yet if you don’t lose it before
you get to the reassembly).
This time I went a new route, grabbed the little point and shoot that backs up my
back-up camera, and did a few really quick and really dirty auto-focus, on-board
flash documentaries of the old bar, both in place and after I got it off and onto
the workbench. No need to bring the file into the computer or to make prints; I
just wanted to remember on which side of the body bushings the retainer clamps went,
and which bolt to nut orientation was original—on the unlikely assumption that what
had been running on the car for the last 30 or 40 years was what the factory intended
in 1964.
The point and shoot camera does a very capable job of showing relationships of parts.
LEONARD TURNER
Work done and back in place; a tighter shot reveals details.
LEONARD TURNER
Think how much more useful this would be with a really complex job, say rebuilding
the transmission, or dealing with the color coding of the wiring behind the dash
(was it the black and blue wire or the blue and black wire?)
Color-coded wiring is a natural for photo documentation.
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Now the PS is a good camera type for this job; the lens will focus close to the
subject, and the on-board flash, typically really close to the lens and thus prone
to produce horrible red-eye in people shots, can minimize shadows in close-up work
shots. Relatively inexpensive, it’s a comfortable camera to have in the shop and
use with less than pristine paws to take the needed images, and the built-in screen
is all you need to jog the memory as to what went where when rebuild time comes.
Never being one to be sated by simplicity, however, I wondered about more complex
and expensive approaches to the problem, and resolved to try an SLR digital with
internal flash, external flash, multiple flashes, light painting with a continuous
source, reflected light (off a photographic umbrella), natural light and filtered
light. Might as well try engine shots; it’s something I need to do pretty often,
and it’s hard to get light into that black hole where the horses live.
Direct flash using program mode with a digital SLR produces a superficially acceptable picture.
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A closer look at 4 reveals poor sharpness with the camera selected (program) f stop,
and there are heavy and confusing shadows.
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Here’s the bottom line. On board flash with an SLR behaves pretty much like the
PS camera. An external flash is higher in power, and allows you to indulge in the
SLR’s ability to shoot in the manual mode and thus select a higher f-stop to get
better depth of field; it is especially effective with one of the snap-on diffusion
devices that came with my strobes. Using a pair of flashes, one on either side of
the camera, helped some with the shadows, but didn’t eliminate them. That required
my secret weapon, the tripod.
We all have a love-hate relationship with the bulky, awkward, clumsy and heavy tripod,
but it can do magic. Once I locked the SLR down onto this three-legged device, I
was able to solve both the depth of field problems, in which items in one plane
are sharp but in another are not, and shadow issues, in which a strong shadow can
pretend to be another wire or mask the margin of an important structure. Three different
light sources worked well when using this for engine shots: natural light from a
broad sky source (not direct sun) did a nice job, as did bouncing the strobe into
a silver photographic umbrella. Moving a continuous light source during a long exposure
also did the trick, and permits considerable customization of the final result.
A tripod and manually selected f stop solves depth of field and sharpness problems,
but even with twin diffused strobes shadows persist and can even be worse.
LEONARD TURNER
Diffuse light from the sky can work well, but not with direct sunlight.
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Bouncing a flash into a silver-lined photographic umbrella is easy and effective.
LEONARD TURNER
"Painting with light" by moving a continuous light source during a long exposure
is a little tricky, but can give a variety of useful and interesting effects.
LEONARD TURNER
Returning to my first area underneath the car where the sun don’t shine, I found
that a continuous light source, in this case a single incandescent bulb, can provide
more detail around the sway bar mount and minimize shadow issues if it is diffused
through a translucent materiel for a time exposure. I used a "one-stop silk" to
spread out my light here, but you could get a similar result with a translucent
white plastic, like an old shower curtain. One promising source I didn’t try is
a ring-light; mine is defunct, and I didn’t have time to build a new one; maybe
for a later blog.
Diffusing light, here with a single small incandescent bulb filtered through thin,
fine mesh cloth, can light a wide area without too much in the way of hot spots or heavy shadows.
LEONARD TURNER
Diffusing light, here with a single small incandescent bulb filtered through thin,
fine mesh cloth, can light a wide area without too much in the way of hot spots
or heavy shadows
So, if you want to document what you’re doing as a source of information, the humble
PS camera does a great job for not much money. If you’d like to instill a bit more
art into the craft, maybe do a scrapbook on a restoration or illustrate a tech article,
try some of these lighting tricks, maybe even combining them when needed.
Keep shooting and let me hear from you at:
leonardt@pca.org. And special thanks to everyone who shared their feelings
with me on the questions raised in last month’s blog; more on that later.