Old Mister Crow's guide to photographing bonsai and kusamono

Will_Heath

Thanks for the blanket tips guys, you made this confirmed bargin hunter smile.

Will

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FlyBri

Evening all.

Does nobody else agree that this thread should be made 'sticky'? I just visited the Test Forum, and I see that Mr Treebeard has a sticky thread there about image resizing. As one of the accidental manslaughterers of Will's 'Crit & Rep' thread, I realize that my opinion might not mean much right now, but would not this thread make a very good 'Photographing Bonsai 101'? Think about how much time and effort it would save the good folk of the Forum if there was not the ever present "It's sorta hard to tell from your picture, but here goes..."



Fly.

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TreeBay

If you've uploaded to the gallery in the past couple weeks, you'd see links to these articles there.

As a general rule, I don't sticky offsite articles. There is a lot of excellent offsite content. Where would it stop?

Regards,

Matt

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mike_p

Since we're posting photo setups, I thought I take a shot of mine.
All of this gear has been acquired over several years. The 5 slave flash units are Vivitar 285, which I think is the most flash for the money. The one at the top of the picture has a bounce attachment. The other 4 have diffuser boxes on them, and give a softer light. The flashes are triggered by digital slaves. The digital trigger is necessary because it's programmed to read the main flash of the digital camera, not the pre-flash. A regular slave trigger would fire on the pre-flash, and give you a dark picture.
The two flashes on each side of the picture are mounted on old microphone stands modified for this use. The two that are closer in and lower are mounted on old modified music stands.
The camera, which is tripod mounted is an Olympus E-20n.

Attached Images

flashsetup.jpg (68.2 KB, 46 views)

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Larry

some good tips there Carl! I'm a bit of an amateur photographer myself and can appreciate the importance of a good background, not always easy, but it needs closer attention with a small digital as theres tons of Depth of field and with our digi, a Fuji sub 1MP job, everything from the ant in front to the 747 flying overhead will be in focus!
I use a SLR too with film but I need instant results so thats where the digi comes in.
Good post !

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Bart Thomas(deceased)

It has been mentioned earlier in this thread (post #37) that black vellux, most economically bought as blankets, makes an excellent photo background.

These can be purchased in black and other colors at JC Penney

I'm posting this partly because the black is far harder to find than I had imagined.

(Will, I am NOT bumping this thread up in response to all the less than generous comments about your photography!)

EarthgirlOK

I wonder if one could combine this tip with Pootsie's tip and dye one black if black can't be found locally (and you hate to mail order things)?

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Bart Thomas(deceased)

Dunno how they hold dye. The blanket in twin size (66x96") is $29.95 (on sale). They also have smaller throws (48x60"; $19.95), which I am considering in lighter colors for smaller plants. (I try to use natural light as much as I can, so shadows are less of a problem.)

EarthgirlOK

How do you do that (outside or in natural light)? I have a point-and-click optional flash zoom type camera (no apperture or f-speed type gizmos) 35 mm non-digital camera. We may get a digital one of these days, but until then...

I've tried taking pictures outside in shade, full sun, dappled shade, etc. I liked Crow's article, but I still don't know how to get an acceptable picture with my plain jane camera-maybe it's just not going to work for bonsai photography.

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