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Comment by Andy Voelkle "AxeMan" on December 16, 2012 at 3:06

Here is a neat 20" (0.5m) light cube from Westcott, and a video from a pro on how to build a light source. I'm now playing around with that setup. I added a strip of six blocks of 3 bright LEDs each, a total of 18 white LEDs which uses about 0.25A at 12VDC. I added this as my top light. Take a look at the short video in case this neat setup may be of interest:

http://fjwestcott.com/?s=digitent&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

I have this equipment now, have built an LED top light, and will be trying to use it to improve my really mediocre photography this weekend.

Comment by Andy Voelkle "AxeMan" on December 8, 2012 at 18:52

I've been building some high-power white LED lights, and I've run into an interesting function of the power supply for the LEDs and the high-speed shutter of most new cameras.

An unfiltered supply tends to produce 60 or 120 pulses (little "hills") of voltage each second, while the camera lens is open (at, say, a 1/60 sec exposure) for just the duration of one pulse of voltage.

Incandescent lamps have pretty even illumination because the filaments do not cool down much between the 60/120 ㎐ pulses of voltage. However, LEDs have instant response, so their brightness follows the voltage curve quickly and for all purposes, exactly.

Therefore, a well-crafted system might supply almost no voltage during a quick exposure, and the LEDs might be fully-illuminated, or almost dark, during a 1/500 sec exposure. The use of heavy capacitive filters is necessary. I also built a power converter which runs at 20,000 Hz and thus requires no capacitor bank on the final LED supply. It's an AC₆₀-DC-AC₂₀₀₀₀-DC system (no other reference implied...).

Comment by Jan Carter on December 8, 2012 at 15:40

Very Good Alexander.  Any settings that surprised you, how well they worked?

Comment by Alexander Noot on December 7, 2012 at 7:57

Hey Le Coutographe,

I'm not entirely sure what it's called. But it's one of the folding/portable variety. With 4 colour backrounds and two halogen lamps and a base for a compact camera.

At the moment I'm not really busy with composition of the photo as I am in trying to figure out what settings to shoot with.

I'm not a photographer, I just want to be able to take some decent pictures of my knives.

I'll be playing around with it a little bit more in the coming weeks. And maybe for some pictures I'll add props in the future. For now I just want to capture as much detail of the knives I'm shooting.

Comment by Le Coutographe on December 7, 2012 at 2:31

@Alexander,

picture is nice but a little bit empty (except of course for this wonderful knife).

- What kind of light box did you get ??

Comment by Alexander Noot on December 7, 2012 at 2:25

Last wednesday I was gifted a lightbox by my wife. So I set about playing around with my compactcamera. And the lightbox.

Learned a lot from playing around with the ISO and lightvalues on the thing.

Finally shot a decent shot of this knife in a position where I think I could repeat the result the way I wanted it to.

Comment by Le Coutographe on November 21, 2012 at 15:20

very happy to join this group of discussions. I'm sure I will learn a lot from you and get some new ideas to magnify knives !

Comment by J.J. Smith III on November 21, 2012 at 1:31

Just a stray comment here...

I was looking at knives on google for a while tonight.  You may or may not be surprised at the number of links that take you back to iKC.  With over 37,000 pics here, it's no small wonder.

(Insomnia at its best...)

Comment by Andy Voelkle "AxeMan" on November 18, 2012 at 23:22

Most digital images are stored as Red-Green-Blue info. An image with "24 bit" color is common now, or 16-million colors. If there is a defect in the sensor or the electronics or the file structore or storage what you find is a rare (these little cameras are pretty reliable) but technically common failure. If there is a transient error of some sort, it may correct itself if you first save your images, then reset the camera two or three times. Hold the reset button down for 10-sec or so. Then remove all the batteries, the memory cards and whatever else of an electronic nature you can pluck out, and then let the camera sit thus for a few minutes (10-30). Then plug the stuff back in and test it again. If the color is then in error it is likely time for a new camera. If the camera is so expensive that a trip to the factory shop is worth a grand or two you might yet get a better camera for the repair cost. This technology is evolving faster than fat ribs over an open flame.

Comment by Gerald Hines on November 18, 2012 at 21:57

Steve did you try to reprogram(refresh,reset whatever yours called it) the old one?

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