1. Always take your pictures in a darkened room.
If you don’t have a windowless room, then you’ll most likely want to wait until nighttime to take marble photos as I do. The darkness essentially removes the possibility of things refl ecting on your surface. Never use a cloud dome, tent, cube, or anything like that.
These things will cause the worst refl ections.
2. If your equipment isn’t black, then cover any light colored items with black electrical tape. Possible objects that would
need to be covered might include the neck of your tripod, parts of your lights, and other shiny parts.
3. Generally, use a black or other dark base around the marble. I sit my marbles directly on black velour with no stand and
angle the camera down toward the marble from the tripod. Lightcolored fabrics can be used, of course, but the problem here
is that you have refl ections from the fabric itself that you will see all around the edges of your marble. Darker backgrounds generally look better for most marbles, especially those that have a lot of clear involved, such as a fl oral marble. The lighter backgrounds are sometimes nice, however, and the edge refl ections may be worth it. One way to avoid refl ections is to rig up a very tall stand for the marble that essentially suspends the marble up in the air above your background. That way the reflections are minimized.
4. After you’ve conquered reflection problems, be sure to take special care with your lighting. I use two—and sometimes three if I want/need backlighting—tabletop lights. I purchased these lights from the American Recorder Company. You can find them on the company’s website at www.americanrecorder.com. They are inexpensive and perfect, since they are stable and easily moved around for placement to avoid inner reflective hot spots, to light up the depths of vortexes, and to take care of various other situations that you will come across when photographing marbles. Whatever lights you use, though, they should be tungsten or halogen, as these most correctly mimic natural lighting. A couple of small “hot spots” from your lights should be the only things that ever interfere with the viewer’s enjoyment of your marble photos. For each picture, you’ll want to play a bit with the placement of the lights to make sure that your marble is optimally lit, that the hot spots aren’t covering important elements of the marble, and that the lighting isn’t bouncing around inside the
clear of the marble creating different bright spots.
When using lights such as these, you can turn your flash off and never use it. Some people are successful using only their flash without other lighting, but you don’t get the same control as you do with good exterior lighting, which allows you to see exactly what you’ll get on your camera’s screen.That way you can easily adjust as necessary.
5. Always use a tripod. Camera stability is essential for crisp, sharp pictures.
6. Good marbles pictures require a good macro mode. As long as you’ve followed the first five points, then you can take great pictures as long as your digital camera has a good macro mode on it. You should always shoot in macro mode, which allows the camera to focus at very short distances from the subject. If your camera doesn’t have this, then you’ll want a new camera. (You may want a new camera anyway to really get the best, most sharp, crisp pictures.) Remember that over time your camera will pay for itself in the form of higher prices that you receive for your work achieved because of great pictures. A DSLR, which allows for manual focus, changing of lens, and other manual settings, might be the best way to go, but it really isn’t needed. I use a Nikon 8800, for example—a really nice camera but not a DSLR—and it does a fantastic job. It is considered an automatic camera but there is a manual mode, and this is important if you really want to take your pictures to the next level. If you’e got a manual mode on your camera, then use it. You should be able to store your settings once they are dialed in and never have to change them again.
The following is a list of several settings that you will want to use:
A. White Balance. This is critical for getting real-life color matching in your images. This is important to collectors, as it’s no fun to receive a marble that looks nothing like the picture used to sell it. Check your camera’s user guide and follow the instructions there to correctly set the white balance, always using the same lighting that you’ll use with your marble photos. Even with good white balancing, images may still appear brighter because of the good lighting, but it’s still accurate compared to putting the marble in that same lighting anywhere. One note—camera lenses in general have the hardest time with blues, so blues will often appear brighter that they truly are. There’s not much you can do about that except to keep it to a minimum.
B. F-stop. In general, I recommend opening up your F-stop to its maximum setting (8.0 on my camera). This larger number will be a smaller aperture size, which requires more light for the image. Thus a greater depth of fi eld and more focus area are achieved. With macro photography, this will bring your entire marble into focus, and you won’t have “fuzzy edges” on your marbles.
C. ISO. Set this to the lowest setting, (50 on my camera). With a stationary subject in good lighting while using a tripod, the lowest ISO will give you crisper, nongrainy pictures. of fi eld and more focus area are achieved. With macro photography, this will bring your entire marble into focus, Set this to the lowest setting, (50 on my camera). With a stationary subject in good lighting while using a tripod, the lowest ISO will give you crisper, non grainy pictures.
D. Exposure Time. Manual mode will allow you to move your exposure up and down, which allows more and less light into the image as necessary. I usually take two or three shots of each marble angle with different exposures in order to ensure that I have the best exposure. Usually 1/8 or 1/15 of a second will give me the best exposure, but sometimes lots of white on the marble will require 1/30 or even 1/60 (very rarely), and vice versa with very dark marbles. You don’t want your image overexposed, which will often “blow out” the lighter designs on your marbles and make them too bright, obscuring the details. You also don’t want it underexposed, making darker areas of your marble too dark so that you can’t see those details. You need to fi nd the perfect exposure point for each shot. My camera allows very easy exposure changing for each shot. Check your manual; it’s probably similar for your camera.
E. Focusing. I generally use autofocus, but you may want to play with the different manual options here, for zooming in on some of the fi ner details of your work, catching elements down inside the marble, and capturing other details.
7. You’ll need the proper balance in your settings for shooting dichro marbles. You’ve probably noticed how diffi cult it is to get good shots of dichro. In my experience it’s never easy. I’ve found, however, that lower lighting/exposure and different lighting angles can often capture nice sparkle. If your exposure is too high, the dichro will often be blown out and the detail of the sparkle is lost. Play with your settings and look for the right balance.
8. Finally, you will probably want to use Photoshop or some other photography software to crop your selected images. Before I save my cropped image, I always sharpen the image one time to bring back some of the crispness that can be lost in the processing of cropping and editing.
In summary, the darkened room and equipment, the lighting, the tripod, and macro mode are the easy part, and luckily you can get great pictures just by doing those things with a simple setup. But if you really want to dial it in, then get to know your camera and start using the manual mode, following the tips I have shared and even discovering some of your own. Cameras can be scary, but with some basic tips it’s really not too bad.
In the beginning, I wanted to run screaming in fear from that sleek mechanical wizardry, but with the help of a good friend, I got past that. Give it a try. So can you!
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