Have you considered taking the shot in HDR? Might make the whole thing
a lot simpler.
take a 3 shot bracket (-2,0,+2) and see what you come up with in
photomatix. I know it's cheating, but I think you're just looking for
results. I always do my HDR work with a $30 A560 powershot.
Otherwise, David is absolutely correct. First figure out the exposure
for the glowing component, then "make" the lighting for the rest of the
room correct. You can try pointing desklamps via homemade reflectors or
whatever you can rig up yourself. It doesn't have to be studio quality
strobes.
Alternately, you can try taking the problem outside. If I don't have a
studio full of lighting equipment, I'll wait until the lighting is good
outdoors and take the subject (or model) outside. This reduces your
equipment needs down to just key lighting. In the case of a VFD/nixie
you won't want any key lighting.
Have you tried making a homemade lightbox? That might be an option too,
depending on exactly what you are photographing and the final image you
are trying to create.
-Adam AJ9D
On 10/25/2011 10:59 AM, David Forbes wrote:
On 10/25/11 10:24 AM, Nick wrote:
I'm trying to get good, consistent, photographs of a VFD display
(single tube) and have having trouble with getting the colours right&
decent detail - this is when the tube is lit (all segments).
Anyone done this with good success and care to share settings/
technique etc.?
Nick
Nick,
I just spent some large amount of time with professional photographers
working with both my Nixie watch and my LED video coat. They took
hours and hundreds of pictures to get a couple good shots. I watched
their methods.
The tube display elements tend to be a lot brighter than the camera's
exposure sensor expects, so you have to use manual exposure setting
and dial it a couple F-stops darker than the meter thinks is correct.
Take test photos and adjust as needed until you're happy with the result.
Once you get the glowing parts correct, then you can start to work on
the background lighting. If you're using manual camera settings, then
the background light changes shouldn't affect the glowing bits' exposure.
Diffused lighting is very helpful to get the background right. That
can be hard to achieve indoors, but it's possible with several lights
pointed at the light-colored room walls and ceiling. Direct lighting
is usually unhelpful. The guy who took photos for PopSci used a light
on each side and one above me, but he had expensive lights with very
tight beam control.
As far as the color goes, blue-green is the most difficult to get
right due to the extremely nonlinear color response of the human
eyeball and the nature of RGB color sensors used in cameras. You'll
have to take several photos with different white balance settings and
see which comes out looking the best. And there's always
post-production software (Photoshop).
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