[beezer]

I'm going to be selling my Series 2 silver plated tenor, and have been trying to take photos. Well, after about a hundred attempts, the results are hopeless - out of focus, too much glare, not in the frame etc.
Has anybody any tips, particularly about reducing glare?
Incidently, the best results for doing small areas e.g. bell engraving have come from plonking the horn on the scanner, and draping with cloth.
Cheers, Dave

 

[Seasax]

try using a macro setting, i think lots of cameras have them now, it's for up close photos, and to reduce glare, perhaps, go outside and take pics without flash.

 

[milandro]

First of all use a decent tripod this will allow for not blurred pictures even if making failry long exposures. Loose the flash (you can exclude it easily) flashligt is almost always detrimental to a good result for most amateurs, if you use the tripod you don't need it . Choose a nice spot on the floor in a room with white walls and choose a faily sunny (outside day) the light on the ceiling and walls will be nice, soft, will reflect in the metal bits and won't have any hot-spots. As a background some people (it happened here) request a black back-grond, frankly I think it is taurus waste but hey, if they are buying they can set the rules of the game.

Make sure you compose your frame on the display, viewfinders can be very deceiving, especially for close-ups. Fill up the frame!

Focus is not (or shouldn't be) a problem in a normal focus mode if you are shooting a full frame saxophone (put them in a diagonal it fills the frame better) for any details choose the macro icon (normally looks like a tulip), most cameras can do a full frame mouthpiece detail without too many problems. USE A TRIPOD!

 

[stevesklar]

generally, to reduce glare I always tell ppl to make sure they take the pic at an angle. Think about it, if your flash goes off it's going to bounce away .. though a sax has alot of things for it to bounce back too

also take further away and use the zoom - don't try to get real up close.

 

[milandro]

yes, but unfortunately lot of saxophones bits are fairly round, therefore will reflect also at an angle. Better use no flash.
The close up can be done also with a zoom but tripod use is imperative when doing that

 

[valleyboy]

i'm with milandro you'll get much better pics if you use a tripod, this is true when photographing most things in poor light without a flash. if you don't have a tripod try putting or holding the camera on something steady so you dont have to hold it freehand. if you also want to use the flash try partialy obscuring it with maybe fine cloth or simiar or reflecting the flash light so that it does'nt aim straight at the sax. experiment and have fun. hopfully your using digital so you can just delete the bad ones. if your going close up use macro as previously mentioned i wouldn't use flash close up it will probably just white out.

 

[milandro]

if you really need to use the flash (fill-in mode would be better) bounce it on the ceiling (use a piece of white carton angled at 45 degrees to bounce the camera flash or tilt the flash if using a separate one.

 

[bruce bailey]

Outside, in the shade, tripod, no flash. I get that done and resize and put them on flickr (free). Sort the photos into "tags" and label as one long word.
Here are some from last week that I will be listing for sale. They are resized to fit ebay standards (I don't recall what tha is):
http://www.flickr.com/photos/[email protected]/tags/connaltogoldchu/show/

 

[Enviroguy]

I just use a little Kodak digital camera.

I put lots of defuse light on the sax, stand back quite a ways, and put a finger in front of the flash. And I usually snap the shot with the sax lying down. If the sax is on a stand, either the neck or bow looks too big unless the angle is just right. Laying the sax down on lumpy sheet or blanket gives perspective so you don't have those problems.

Also, A light blue or dark color background tends to look best for saxophones. For small items like mouthpieces, a green background seems to look good.

 

[SOTSDO]

If you use any light source other than a diffused one (like natural sunlight, bounced off of a flat surface), you are likely to get hot spots where the light is directly reflected back to the camera's sensor. Using natural (outside) light solves both problems at once.

I also agree with the formatting suggestions. Iffen you try to take a "straight on" photograph, it's going to be too small in the finished version whether you choose landscape or portrait. Diagonal may seem weird, but it gives you a better photo for the camera that you are saddled with.

Regarding backgrounds and the like, a hour or so spent browsing the saxophones for sale on eBay will give you a lot of ideas, both positive and negative.

 

[SactoPete]

I've had good luck by taking pics outside on a white sheet. White seemed to work out better than black because of contrast differences. The best time of day seems to be when the sun is close to the horizon (i.e. dawn or dusk), so there's lots of color in the sky, but still diffuse light, and you get some gorgeous shots (my nickel-plated True-tone looks like it glows!).

The auto-focs on my camera seemed to not like the saxes too much, so I had to (gasp) manually focus on what I wanted.

Good luck.

Pete

 

[crazydaisydoo]

Photography is one of my other hobbies

Good advice so far, but this works for me:

1) Good Tripod, or put your camera on a solid surface
2) Macro setting, or macro lens, for detail shots
3) Natural daylight, or use artificial spotlight. OR bounce flash off ceiling or side wall with a good gun. If it is a compact digital camera, turn the flash off!!! (direct flash shows fingermarks, and a horrible reflection)
4) Use the self timer on the camera to stop shake, if you don't have a remote

These exposures can be slow, so you need to keep the camera absolutely rock solid, hence the timer trick and the tripod

Use a suitable pale background (the ones below were taken on a white duvet!)

My avatar, and these were taken this way:

http://www.saxontheweb.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=1353&d=1177156476

http://www.saxontheweb.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=1356&d=1177156526
Hope this helps!