Making guitar pictures
Posted: Thu Jul 18, 2024 1:52 pm
Carl asked about the ways we take our guitar photographs. We know there are several way to skin the cat, but will reveal how I do it.
20 years ago I took my guitars to some place nice, took some pics and that was it. The results were sometimes nice, but overall very inconsistent.
A few years ago I decided to take it to a higher level and made some investments:
1. A good camera. Most mobile phones make mainly wideangle pics. For landscapes fine, but for product pics not so appealing, because of lack of depth in the picture. So I bought a Canon 77D.
I would prefer my 135 mm lens for the subject, but I cannot get away to much from the guitars, so the 50mm 1.8 is my main lens for this.
2. A simple camera stand. Because of the wanted apertures a longer exposure time is used with the self-timer.
3. An appealing background. You can go into nature for surroundings, but I like a studio style. At first I bought a black cloth in a camera store. Way too expensive. Worked nice, but the appearance was that of guitars coming off the background. Like they were floating. After that I got a blended blue cloth. It brought back the depth in the pictures, but the blue was somewhat chilly. Now I went to a haberdashery and got for a few bucks a dark blue velour (suede like) fabric. 7x15 foot.
Wrapped around a 3” pvc pipe it hangs from the wall. A bit wider would be better, ‘cause now I have to take care not to get the edges in view.
4. You can have never enough light. I used flash light before, but that was not very satisfying and very harsh. So I went for some not too expensive studio day-lights.
This is how my setup looks like. Maybe others have a different approach. (The humor here is, that the pics look like they were made in a studio, but the truth is, they come from a very messy livingroom. HA!)
And this is an example of how it works out:
20 years ago I took my guitars to some place nice, took some pics and that was it. The results were sometimes nice, but overall very inconsistent.
A few years ago I decided to take it to a higher level and made some investments:
1. A good camera. Most mobile phones make mainly wideangle pics. For landscapes fine, but for product pics not so appealing, because of lack of depth in the picture. So I bought a Canon 77D.
I would prefer my 135 mm lens for the subject, but I cannot get away to much from the guitars, so the 50mm 1.8 is my main lens for this.
2. A simple camera stand. Because of the wanted apertures a longer exposure time is used with the self-timer.
3. An appealing background. You can go into nature for surroundings, but I like a studio style. At first I bought a black cloth in a camera store. Way too expensive. Worked nice, but the appearance was that of guitars coming off the background. Like they were floating. After that I got a blended blue cloth. It brought back the depth in the pictures, but the blue was somewhat chilly. Now I went to a haberdashery and got for a few bucks a dark blue velour (suede like) fabric. 7x15 foot.
Wrapped around a 3” pvc pipe it hangs from the wall. A bit wider would be better, ‘cause now I have to take care not to get the edges in view.
4. You can have never enough light. I used flash light before, but that was not very satisfying and very harsh. So I went for some not too expensive studio day-lights.
This is how my setup looks like. Maybe others have a different approach. (The humor here is, that the pics look like they were made in a studio, but the truth is, they come from a very messy livingroom. HA!)
And this is an example of how it works out: