Photographing Collectibles with a Digital Camera and Comparing Light Sources

Collectibles

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Collectibles

Photographing Collectibles with a Digital Camera

Comparing Light Sources

Taking holiday pictures of collectibles can be very disappointing. You might think you had the perfect angle, lighting and composition until the prints were done days later. With a digital camera instant results can tell you whether or not a picture needs to be redone. But even with digitals the results can be disappointing at times. Some of the early affordable cameras didn't have flashes and then when flashes did come out, in some instances they were so bright as to be almost worthless. Nowadays prices have come down, flashes are much better and cameras are so easy to use that almost everyone has one.

When taking pictures of the holiday displays around the house and outside I use a combination of several set-ups. Natural light can work well if there is a source by the items to be photographed. A flash is good for "distance" pictures, but not good for close ups. My favorite setup for photographing collectibles is a photoflood light in a metal lamp socket. The whole set up costs about $8. for the lamp socket and a few dollars for the bulb.

To illustrate some of the differences when taking pictures, I took four pictures at same time of the day, using four different light sources. All of the pictures were taken with a Sony Mavica on the lowest resolution. The object was to have the picture be as accurate as possible, when doing this experiment I did learn another trick or two (by accident!)

Compare the light sources

The ornament was taken about 24" from a window with bright afternoon light, but apparently it is not bright enough with the dark green surrounding the piece.
The flash was not on full power and actually did not do too bad a job, usually the piece "flattens" out more and it is harder to see the details.
The tint of the photoflood light on this piece washed out some of the very subtle gold colors on the cap, but I still would be okay with this picture. This is the method I usually use for collectibles, I suspect this didn't turn out as well because of the light colors.
I actually took this one by accident and it has the best result. I had several folks compare the ornament to the screen shot and this one won. The flash was not on full power and the photoflood light was about four feet away from the ornament.