Author Topic: Brown Bass (Read 708 times)

mnewman · « **on:** July 27, 2003, 03:46:18 PM »

Here is my Brown Bass which can also be seen in the construction archives.I have yet to upgrade to Series electronics but will do so in the future.

mica · « **Reply #1 on:** July 28, 2003, 11:07:30 AM »

matt - I love the photos! Was also excited to hear about your latest acquisition, though I wasn't surprised to hear you wound up with that bass, it's just your cup of tea.

mnewman · « **Reply #2 on:** July 28, 2003, 11:58:39 AM »

Thanks Mica,did you check out the photo's of that bass in the Series section.It photographed really well.

palembic · « **Reply #3 on:** July 29, 2003, 12:23:17 AM »

My congratulations for the excellent pictures! Of course I love the bass and I did follow the construction but (hup) these pictures do her honour!

Paul the bad one

PS: as fervent photographer myself I suggest you explain here shortly how you did it. I think it's good info every Alembic-guitar lover want to know. Well ...if you want to share those secrets!

mnewman · « **Reply #4 on:** July 29, 2003, 10:25:36 AM »

I used a Nikon Coolpix digital camera,a few yards of black fabric and a room with lots of natural light.There are no lights used at all in these photos.The camera did come with a disc that has a photo editing suite.This was helpful with brightness and contrast and getting the color just right.I have to give credit to Bunnybass.com which has a pretty informative section on taking pictures of basses and it really is pretty easy to get good shots using this method.

palembic · « **Reply #5 on:** July 31, 2003, 12:14:57 AM »

What I tought!
So read this a couple of times my brothers and sisters and please -plea-ea-ea-ease- NEVER use a flash!
Oh yes: another hint!
If you don't have a computer with a graphic suite, and you take the picture before a black or dark background (what definitely works for light/brown coloured wood) take care to measure the light ON THE WOOD. Take your camera close to the surface of the bass and measure the amount of light (with manual camera's by turning the diafragm ring, automatic camera's have mostly a memory button) THAN you go back a little and position your camera for the desired view on your instrument.
Indeed the Bunnybass department is LOADED with excellent pictures of basses and really, it's just a trick to do.

Paul the bad one

Oh yeah.
One other thing.
There is a relation between lens aperture and focus and type of lens (tele - wide-angle) and shutterspeed.
In most of the cases -working before a black/dark background- a 37-70 mm lens will do great.
See it this way: the higher number chosen on your diafragm (f.i. 11) the smaller the aperture of the lens is, the more the lightbeams are forced against each other, the more will be in focus on the picture. So if you want those fancy angle shots with a large aperture ... the results will be most of the time not what you like.
So use a small aperture (fi 11) on a lens between 35-70mm with a long shutterspeed. Consequently: use a tripod or block you camera on something to be stable.

Phew ...I talk too much

ganque · « **Reply #6 on:** August 01, 2003, 06:54:18 PM »

paul, nice run through of photography, but if you are useing a camera where you have control of the aperture and shutter speed, larger apertures such as 2.8, 4, 5.6 around that area will give a sharper image, but more focusing is required, the depth of field is reduced, but as paul said there is a relation between aperture, focal length of the lens, film speed, focus and shutterspeed. also with the larger apertures you can get a faster shutter speed, making it easier to hold the camera still for the appropriate exposure time. i have so much more to say, and i'm sure paul did too. maybe there should be a photography thread somewhere in here.
~adam

jet_powers · « **Reply #7 on:** August 04, 2003, 12:40:49 PM »

Perhaps I'm a bit off topic here but....

All the digital photos I have of my basses are 10x the allowed size to post. Can anyone tell me why this might be? How can I reduce the size to be able to post these pics?

Any help would be appreciated.

John

bassman10096 · « **Reply #8 on:** August 04, 2003, 01:44:43 PM »

John:
I just figured out yesterday how to reduce the file size to make my digital pix pictures postable. If you have photostudio software on your PC there should be an edit function having to do with image size. To me, the techno-fool, I thought that was talking about physical size (8x10, etc.). Not so. By adjusting the size, I was reducing the file size - down to the magic number of 150 (max downloadable to this site).

If you want to see the pictures, they are in Showcase/Spoilers/Spoiler in Vector body.
Hope this helps. If not, Email me and I'll walk through the exact steps on one of my 2 (I was surprised to find I have two) photostudio software packages.

Bill

mikedm · « **Reply #9 on:** August 04, 2003, 01:47:01 PM »

John - You should capure your images as high as you can anyway, but for posting here...at first, I had the same problem. I do have the benefit of using Photoshop and it made it esay to set the quality level (1-12) when saving a JPeg file. Experiment, while the final file size is significantly smaller, even setting it as low as 6 or 7 (medium) didn't effect the image quality as much as I thought. I would imagine that even the most basic programs have some sort of control for quality or optimization for the web. I don't recall exactly where I saw it, maybe the HELP area, there are tips for posting photos/images to the club.

Now, the trick is getting them to look as nice as the ones in this thread, yowza! this bb looks great.

Mike

mikedm · « **Reply #10 on:** August 04, 2003, 01:51:26 PM »

Bill, you beat to it! John take Bill up on his offer, let's see your bass!

mikedm · « **Reply #11 on:** August 04, 2003, 01:52:34 PM »

Bill - you beat me to it

John - take Bill up on his offer, let's see your bass!

bassman10096 · « **Reply #12 on:** August 04, 2003, 01:58:37 PM »

Mike: Thanks for your info. I really had no idea what I was trying to do when I fixed my images - just got lucky. That was after several very embarrassing failed attempts to post. You know: Here's my bass... (no picture). People were beginning to make fun of me on the thread.

Bill

Jan R · « **Reply #13 on:** August 04, 2003, 11:53:37 PM »

There is a very good freeware tool on the net called irfanview for those who don't have the more expensive tools like photoshop. With Irfanview you can easily resize, rotate, and save your images in a lower jpeg compression, so that picures reduce in size. It is easy to do in batch for a series of pictures. You can download it for free on http://www.irfanview.com

I have both, photoshop and irfanview. But I really recommend irfanview for those small jobs.

Cheers
Jan

jet_powers · « **Reply #14 on:** August 05, 2003, 05:03:57 AM »

Hi all..

Thanks for your help. I suspected that there would be some utility in the imaging program. I guess I was just too impatient to look around for it. Hopefully I'll be posting some pics soon.

John