Just picked up a cheap extension tube set for my Nikon. For sure the poor mans macro. Dust is a real pain at this scale. Still getting the feel for this as it's super difficult to focus with this rig. Thought I'd try it out on my PO...



















The camera rig...

 

Great shots. Nice dof.

 

I'd say pretty good! Just keep a can of Dust Off handy and one soft brush to help in keeping the small particles away!

 

Fantastic pictures! All the scratches give great character to the watch.

 

Thanks gents. From the wrist perspective the watch still looks pristine. Guess you never really want to dive too deep.

 

Not usually a fan of photo retouch software, but when ahead and tried one on these shots and am pretty happy with the results. Not terrifically better, but was able to adjust the levels and cool the shots a bit while removing a fair amount of dust.

 

GREAT job! Wish I could make my Nikon produce great shots like you have.

 

Very nice close ups I bet the watch hardly shows any scratches in the flesh.

 

Thanks. Light tent and flash kit help,

 

right. Looks pristine from arms length.

 

Shots look very good - Did you shoot in RAW, or jpeg ?

Can I please suggest you hit the 'sharpening' option in your editing suite...........You will be astonished at the further 'step up' once more, in definition

I just did it with one of your images...............200% improvement again

All digital images should be sharpened - it is not a deceit, you are simply maximising the resolution of the chip.

 

Second set were sharpened about middle of the range.

 

These are very nice shots.

Just out of curiosity, why are you not a fan of photo retouch SW? Cameras do not see like you eyes/brain see. As a guy who makes a living with a camera, every photo I sell has something done to it in Adobe Photoshop. There is no sin in taking off dust. There is no sin in adjusting levels. There are certainly sins to be committed in photo editing SW but what you have done seems completely sin free?

JohnCote

 

John, two reasons....

1. A bit lazy and burned out as my wife used to be a wedding photographer and I edited her photos with Lightroom and PS.
2. My editing occurs on a laptop with a pretty crappy display. For all I know, I'm making the picture worse not better. I used to use a PC with a decent monitor and calibrator. None of that now.

 

Ahhhh, no morallity reasons then. Just wondering.

Best,

JohnCote

 

I shoot everything in RAW with a small jpeg also. I just use PS elements and it does the job pretty well for most things I need. I shoot a ton of photos each day, and I take them quickly with very little set-up while at the bench, and sometimes it shows, so a little help in PS is a good thing IMO.

Cheers, Al

 

Nice!

 

Only shot in raw a couple times. Can't remember if it made a big difference though?

 

Raw will actually give you worse shots off the camera, flatter and unprocessed. Raw is a digital negative and is meant to be processed digitally in Photoshop or equivalent conversations. Worth saying what you "see" in a raw picture is not all there is, just a representation of a neutral rendering. Unless you want to process the picture don't shoot raw. If you want to process it a little shoot JPEG, if you are more serious TIFF which doesn't degrade through processing . If you want to keep a negative for multiple processing Raw.

 

Oh yeah, it's coming back to me now. RAW has no internal processing, (contrast, sharpening, etc). I also seem to remember I couldn't shoot as fast.