Photos of Glow in the Dark items

[ptbeads]

I am getting my Halloween stuff ready to go and I use glow powder on some of my items. I want to take pics of the bead in natural lighting and then without lights so you can see the glowing effect.
Does anyone know how to do this? If I just turn off the light, I get a very fuzzy picture.
Thanks!

[tradesbears]

try a black light.

[Dylan]

lets see some pictures of what you have.

[ptbeads]

Here is my little witch's cauldron in daylight and glowing.
38877
38878
38879

[Emily]

Totally non-expert guess here, but -- are you using autofocus? My guess is that the camera is trying to focus on the glow and is finding it impossible. Maybe what you need to do is get your camera to lock its focus on your bead with the light on, then turn the light off and snap your picture. (Don't ask me how to do this. I know my camera does focus lock, but I'd have to read the manual to figure out how.)

[Dylan]

very cool

[Feldt's Glass]

Cool bead. Do you have a tripod? You will need to have the camara very still more so than a person can do, so if you don't have a tripod try putting it down on a flat surface and prop the bead up to whereever you need to according to where the camara is. Does that make sence. Very simple tripod=night shots.

[ptbeads]

Yes, I have a tripod. Just can't find the stupid thing! I'm sure it will turn up someday. When/if I find it, I'll see if I can get a better pic.

Thanks everyone!

[Emily]

Until you find the tripod, prop the camera on a stack of books or something. If you have a timer (shutter delay) feature, use it, so that you don't have to worry that you're moving the camera at all when you're pushing the button.

[PondRacer]

Also: If your camera is capable, autofocus on that in daylight, then TURN OFF the autofocus feature (keep the camera where it is), turn off the lights, take picture.

I think that will work much better.

PondRacer

[JanMD]

Emily is entirely correct, in my opinion --> the auto-focus is failing.

Put the camera on the tripod, and manually focus with all the lights on. Then turn all the lights off and take the shot.

Be sure to also try overexposing at increments until you get a good shot of the glow plus a tiny bit of detail in the bead below. If possible. It may not be possible. You may be stuck with a floating glowing top.

It looks quite nifyt though!!

JanMD

[tradesbears]

here is what i did...

i have a kodak easyshare z740,soory not the best pic but they may help you. i made up a photo box like this one http://strobist.blogspot.com/2006/07/how-to-diy-10-macro-photo-studio.html

i have a ott-lite and a black light. like the one that you find in halloween stuff.
39185 daylight lamp only- on out side of the box on the top
39186 black light- that i had right beside the camora. shinning on the inside of the box.
39188 i used the daylight lamp to make it glow and took the pic as soon as i took the lamp away.
if my cammora had a macro it would be better. it took some playing around to get it to work. i hope this helps

[PondRacer]

You did better, but you may want to lengthen the exposure time for the glow in the dark images if you are able to do so on the camera, so the image will register better. If the camera calls for say 1/60th second shutter speed in daylight, it may call for 2 seconds (or longer) in dark. I'd just override the settings and go for a bit longer exposure time. Test exposure times to see what you come up with that looks the best. :)

PondRacer

ps. I am not exactly sure what camera you have, so I am making a best guess as to capabilities of the camera.

[JanMD]

Yeah, but the longer the exposure time the more "noise" she gets in the image. "Noise" is all the little dots that you see in the longer-exposed image, especially in the background. This is a really hard thing to get done right!

Hmmm!

JanMD

[PondRacer]

Yeah, this is true. I fix that by going to ISO 100 or 200 instead of the usual 400 on my digirebel.

PondRacer

[drnihili]

You can also get pretty good noise reduction programs for taking the bacground noise out. While they do have some drawbacks, they should work fine for those types of pictures.

[JanMD]

That's true! Here's the low-down from Photoshop CS2:

===========

To reduce image noise and JPEG artifacts ----
Choose Filter > Noise > Reduce Noise.
Zoom in on the preview image to get a better view of image noise.

Set options:
-Strength Controls the amount of luminance noise reduction applied to all image channels.
-Preserve Details Preserves edges and image details such as hair or texture objects. A value of 100 preserves the most image detail, but reduces luminance noise the least. Balance the Strength and Preserve Details controls to fine-tune noise reduction.
-Reduce Color Noise Removes random color pixels. A higher value reduces more color noise.
-Sharpen Details Sharpens the image. Removing noise reduces image sharpness. Use the sharpening control in the dialog box or use one of the other Photoshop sharpening filters later to restore sharpness.
-Remove JPEG Artifacts Removes blocky image artifacts and halos caused by saving a image using a low JPEG quality setting.

If luminance noise is more prevalent in one or two color channels, click the Advanced button and then choose the color channel from the Channel menu. Use the Strength and Preserve Details controls to reduce noise in that channel.
============

Piece of cake!

JanMD