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Need Help\Ideas for a MF Camera Sys for Product Photography

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
I have a real problem with this. YOUR taking food off my table. LOL

Seriously though you do have to think on what you do best and your time involved in that is much more profit driven than trying to save a few bucks and take that design time away doing this stuff.

Crap I say this all the time to my wife. Why would you want me to do some meaningless task when I am over here making a lot of money doing this.

Stephen is right , this is a accounting question and time value situation that you have to decide where your time is best spent.

My theory is this I need a doctor I will drag my butt in and do it which is not easy for me. I need a lawyer he is going to be much better prepared to make my case than i could ever be no matter how much I think I may know it may take 10 times the amount of time for me to figure it out. Obviously you getting my drift here and I am a working Pro so when I see these comments than my ears perk right up. Seriously i don't know your shooter but if he is anything like me he will shoot circles around you. That is not bragging but years spent on developing all the techniques required to getting a image to the printed page and the day you start sending garbage out for your advertising than just start getting ready to close your doors. Garbage in is garbage out and those facts will never change.

Okay i know i just gave you a hard time and was not meant in a mean spirited way but here is my rub you are mostly likely a damn good jewelry designer stick to what you know that is where the money is. Not trying to save in area's that take you away from that.

Now having said all that I will still go to the wall and help you figure out what you need but you need a lot and you need a lot of experience. Where here to help.

Now to be fair I just watched my wife with 38 catheters in her breast getting her radiation treatment. 5 HIGHLY paid doctors/scientists and me in the room. Not a chance in hell could i do that. In that room i was the class idiot and totally accept that fact.
 

Mike M

New member
Guy makes a good point

From now on, I'm gonna avoid these kinds of questions just to preserve some kind of integrity for the industry.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Well Mike i certainly don't want to discourage these type of questions as they should get asked. Lets face it I have clients that are shooting there own stuff that i used to do but it is a certain type of shooting where real expertise is not always needed and they can save money. That part I get totally and no reason to have a shooter comes into do a silly shot that is used for some engineering diagram or something. The trick is they call the guns in still for there advertising or any external work. This is where the public see's the company behind the image.

In this case the OP is using a shooter for his advertising. The question remains for him does he really want to risk that type of shooting and also take time away from the very very important design work that he does. It's like the risk reward type thing and that is all I am bringing up is to be really careful. Obviously he is the talent and very good one at that but should he spread himself that thin. I always want people to learn photography obviously I love it immensely after all these years and I do care about the integrity of the industry and the quality that gets labeled Pro photography. It's slipping trust me. My more concern is the OP taking on to much of a risk that his business could hurt from it but by all means learn as much as he can of photography. The question becomes when do you feel you can do both for him. My advice just be real careful before you really take this on. It sounds easy but it is not.
 

MedShooter

New member
Guys, I appreciate all your comments.
Correction here, I'm not using my photographer for advertising shots. They're not even creative shots. They're shots we're taking for online cataloging. There really isn't rocket science to it although I'm sure setting up the lighting and the equipment is a skill.
At the end, it does come down to accounting, and for me at the way I'm going I could have the cost of a 40mpx camera system in about 3 years time with the way we're going right now. I've already found other to outsource the color correction at a minimal cost. I also would have to calculate the amount of time spent in taking the items to the photographers studio and getting them back which counts for something.
Although I can understand the "eating my lunch" thinking here, I was mainly interested in figuring out whether a nice MF camera system could be set up for about 10K. I've been looking very keenly at the Pentax 645D and might demo it or something once it hits the states to see if it would fit our needs.
 

Guy Mancuso

Administrator, Instructor
Okay horse of a different breed than and I'm sorry as well. I get sometimes very intense on these things and it may have been taken wrong. My concern really is you and your time and hope you understood all my logic there.
 

dick

New member
They're shots we're taking for online cataloging...
At the end, it does come down to accounting, and for me at the way I'm going I could have the cost of a 40mpx camera system in about 3 years...
I also would have to calculate the amount of time spent in taking the items to the photographers studio and getting them back which counts for something...
I think most members here would regard MFD as overkill for online pictures... If you want a good 1Mpx picture for the web, and you were using a DSLR with an Anti-Aliasing filter and Bayer interpolated, you would need to down res 10* to cancel the effect of the AA, and 2 or 4 times for the Bayer interpolation, so a 24 + Mpx DSLR file might be adequate. DR may not be a major issue in studio photography where you can control the lighting contrast, and a 16 -22Mpx DigiBack would, I think, be OK.

You also have to account for the space you need to keep and use the equipment, and, if you do do not have a permanent studio, the time taken to set it up each time you use it.

This could work well if you (or an employee) were a keen photographer who could leave the kit set up in their spare room. It does depend very much on the operator, and for jewelery, security might be a consideration... for any product design industrial espionage might be a consideration, but not if you were about to put the images on the net.

If it is your business and you want to buy the kit with untaxed money for you (or someone else) to use for other purposes, that is different. If an employee was keen, free use of the kit would be an incentive to learn how to get the best out of it.
 

yaya

Active member
Just throwing a spanner here...I know that for online cataloguing, especially for jewellery there are some designers who use solutions such as this one Where they can combine photographing the actual product with 3D-ing it on a computer.
The end result IMO does not look as realistic as a real photo (because of DOF and other issues) but for many applications it serves the purpose quite well...

Back to the topic I agree with much of what was said here about needing to have the basic lighting skills. As a designer (in previous life) I know that if you have an "eye" for imaging it should not be too difficult for you to acquire these skills quickly, given some good guidance and some practise.

Yair
 

dick

New member
Just throwing a spanner here...I know that for online cataloguing, especially for jewellery there are some designers who use solutions such as this one Where they can combine photographing the actual product with 3D-ing it on a computer.
Yair
This is very artificial, and can make glass look like a good diamond, but diamonds are unique and "natural" any way.

It is quite impressive how they have created/falsified spectral highlights.
 

FromJapan

Member
Okay, if you're talking about online catalogs, perhaps you could do it yourself. But why on earth would you need a 40mpx camera for that?? You're figuring on amortizing the camera system over three years. But that's just the camera part. Lighting, space for shooting - have you considered those costs? Then there's time spent learning the technical stuff, plus, once you get going, the time spent actually shooting. This is time that is taken away from your designing time. If you think you come out ahead after considering all these factors, great. But why not get some basic lighting and learn with a decent SLR? It doesn't have to be a 1DSIII.

Kumar
 
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