The $5.00 Photo Studio
 

Our new tutorial is now posted. The $5.00 Photo Studio is one approach to an inexpensive photo studio/booth for taking good pictures of beads and jewelry. Simple to construct and use.. takes less than 1/2 hour to make. Stop on by and take look www.dawnandevan.com/tutorials.htmThere are also some tips and techniques for editing and adorning your pictures as well.

I hope you enjoy -

Evan

Nice Evan ... thnx much again!

That was great!!! I gave it 5 stars.

Evan,

Absolutely wonderful!!! Ditto the 5 stars. Thank you for sharing your talents so freely. I sent you a pm asking to purchase the cd.

Thanks again,

Deb

=D> Evan,
That was an outstanding tutorial! I'm such a visual person, this was perfect!

Thank You, Thank You!!!

Susan

Great

Evan, thank you so much for sharing. You've done such a wonderful job.
Catharine

p.s. Lisa thanks for calling this to my attention :)

I'm totally Floored!!!
 

Evan, http://smilies.sofrayt.com/fsc/clap.gif
Once again you have dazzled us all with your vast knowlege. http://smilies.sofrayt.com/%5E/j0/clever.gifI can't tell you how much this tutorial has help me. I was thinking of going back to school to learn more about Photo Shop CS2 which we recently aquired.http://smilies.sofrayt.com/%5E/j0/book.gif I'm going to hold off for a while and try some of these great techniques that you have shared.http://smilies.sofrayt.com/%5E/j0/glasses.gif Love the bowl studio. Before I bought the light tent and tri-pod, I was using a plastic shoe box which worked rather well too. Thank you so very much. I wish there was some way that I can return the favor to you. If there is, just let me know.
J.http://smilies.sofrayt.com/fsc/diadem.gif

Thanks so much for all the nice comments! I had looked at so many different approaches myself, but it's nice having a simple little setup that is reusable and works just great for the all the small stuff I photograph. It's a pleasure to share especially when everyone seems so appreciative as well. Feel free to drop questions on photoshop should you have any. I'll do my best to answer! (It's one of my favorite toys!).

Have a great weekend -

Evan

Fantastic! I just subcribed to your newsletter!

Char

I bummed a ride to Home Depot today and picked up the necessary pieces. I don't recommend buying those clip-on lamps there, since they're $6 each! However, a six pack of compact flourescents is $10, so that sort of makes up for it. Assembly did indeed take around 10 minutes, and lacking a saw I used a gigantic drill bit to cut the plastic disc out. All went well until I actually took photos... they're all yellow!!!



I think this may be the result of using a salvaged bowl which has slight spaghetti sauce stains around the bottom in a ring.

GRRRR!

Moral of the story: Buy a new bowl. Don't steal a stained one from a communal dorm kitchen. : )

I am with everyone else, great tutorial...so much information, going to have to watch it again.

When the folks at HGTV see this you might be their new star. Thanks so much!

Kathy

Practicing on old images.
 

Hi Evan,
Since I viewed your tutorial I've been playing around in my Photoshop program. I took an old image of a focal bead out of my archives and decided to practice the techniques that you've shared. Here is one of my attempts.
It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. With this technique, maybe I can even make my wonky beads look good. http://smilies.sofrayt.com/fsc/blow%20kisses.gif Thank you so much!

J.http://smilies.sofrayt.com/fsc/sunshade.gif

Jeanette - Glad that it was of some help to you! Please feel free to drop us a note anytime with questions or comments. I do try to respond to every email we receive.

Have a great week -

Evan

I'm pouting. I went and tried the link, closing everything incase my version of the software was free, etc. I sat there. Evan moved once (no sound ~ figured it was my machine or my connection). So just in case it was my connection I sat there. Like a staring contest for over 5 minutes just in case. Cracked me up.

Not being critical. Just cracked me up. Obviously a problem on my end. But I think I'll know you if I see you on the street. ;)

Thanks for providing this. I'll check it out on another computer sometime.

Nancy - If you can't get it to work, let me and I'll try to assist from my end as much as I can. A DVD version is in the works, should be ready in a week or so and that has the advantage of being full screen, high resolution and fully chaptered. And if that wasn't enough... no waiting for a download! At any rate check our website for availaibity of that in about a week. Otherwise let me know if I can help.

Ev

:koolaid: Yeah. One way or the other, I'll see it. I'll let you know if I have a problem or want to order. My guess is another computer, maybe with a better connection, will do the trick.

Thanks.

Okay... please don't take this any way but positive as I'm just trying to give some feedback (I'm just in a grumpy mood from crappy sales people which didn't make this process easier). I'm sorry if some of that comes across here.

Now that I have said that...

After reading the page and watching the tutorial, I went out to find the materials to make my own photo box.

Since IKEA is opposite end of the city from me, I was loathe to drive all the way over there. I figured, how hard can a translucent white bowl be to find? Apparently, very much so.
I started at Walmart because I had to stop by there anyways. Closest I found was a Rubbermaid salad bowl with thin stripes of translucent with most of the bowl being clear.
From there I went to the two dollar stores next door which had nothing close, then down to Home Outfitters. The closest they had were wooden bowls and solid white glass ones.
In the same mall, there was a Rafters and a Winners. Nadda at either of those at all.

The moral of the story. Just bite the bullet and drive across town and buy the IKEA bowls. It will save you a headache.


From there I went to Home Depot. I am on a personal boycott of Revy, so I avoided them. There, I found mostly all the pieces I needed. The clerk had no idea what a nylon wing nut was and we searched throughout the hardware section and couldn't find it. I did come up with an alternative that I think will work well.

I bought a 1/4 - 2" brass slot head bolt with a brass wing nut to match. I also bought two 1/4 rubber washers. I am going to put a rubber washer on each side of the friction lid support. This should give some padding so that the camera base does not get scratched, as well as some friction so that you don't have to tighten it insanely to keep it from sliding.


When I got everything home, I quickly ran into a problem. DO NOT buy the Stanley brand of friction lid supports (the only brand that Home Depot carries). The centre slot is too narrow to allow the 1/4 bolt through. I brought it back to Home Depot and the sales clerk's suggestion was for me to grind down the steel to make it fit. Instead, I called around and found that Totem Building supplies carries the National Hardware brand. More driving around (again, across the city) and I finally have all the pieces.

I have to say though, this is not a $5.00 photo box, though still very reasonable. These prices are in Canadian dollars.
IKEA Bowls ~ $4.00
HOME DEPOT Hardware bits ~ $2.50
TOTEM Friction Lid Support ~ $4.50

Total ~ $11.00

Also, here are the prices of the other bits.
HOME DEPOT Daylight Bulbs (3) ~ $15.00
HOME DEPOT Clip on Lamp ~ $10.00

In all, with all my bits and lighting, not including about six hours of my time and gas money, I spent about $50 on this photo box.



When I am finished catching up on emails, I will attempt to put it all together.

I'm sorry that you had so many difficulties in getting all the materials together! I did specify the National friction lid support (and there is a link to a store in the instructions above the video on our web page to an online hardware store that has them for $1.75) Perhaps I just got luck with that one since I saw it first in a True Value hardware store here and it just seemed to fit.

As far as bowls go, I've made a couple of these now in different sizes for specialty use. I like the little Ikea ones (they are cheap!) and small, just right for beads. But I also made one from a cake platter storage unit. This is nice because it has a snap on bottom so you can store your backgrounds and styrofoam, etc... inside the unit when your not using it (found this little gem at the container store.)

Also I would be concerned you may destabilize the camera and put more stress on it by spacing it further away from bracket with a washer. A better alternative if you're concerned might be to cover the bracket with something like contact paper and cut the slot out with an xacto knife.

I hope your photo studio turns out well and you don't loose any fingers! Drop a picture here of your finished product! I'd love to see how you make out.

Evan

Oh, I had that same problem with the Stanley friction lid thing - I grabbed a blue bit with pretty big grit on it from the stash of flex shaft bits in our metals studio, and it took about 5 seconds to make the screw fit perfectly. It's not far off, like less than a millimeter.

EvanH : I wanted to get the National Hardware brand, but in researching was lead to believe that in Canada, only Walmart carried it, and Walmart doesn't carry that particular product. Which is why I went for the Stanley one, not realizing there was a difference. On your website, you do indeed state exactly which one you used, but it doesn't indicate that other brands might not work. That's all I was saying.

For the bowls, I looked for anything vaguely bowl shaped in the white. The problem was the plastic. As it is winter here, it seems no one is carrying the picnic standard plastic ware of any kind. I'm sure it would have been much easier to find in the summer.


alissa : I talked to the guys at Home Depot and they kept telling me how incredibly hard it would be to grind down the Stanley lid support. I was going to ignore them as they tend to do the whole "oh, poor female isn't capable of 'manly' pursuits" attitude. Glad to hear it worked for you!



Off to make my photo box...

For me it was a function of having the right kind of drill bit avilable - There's a photo on this page of the kind I used (the blue bullet). It might be really tedious if you had to manually file it or something.

Good luck with construction!

I'm glad that everyone seems to be enjoying this one! For those that mentioned to me that the Photoshop portion of this tutorial was 'cutoff' on the screen, I re-encoded it last night and reposted it very early this morning (around 6:00 a.m. chicago time) so you can now see the full photoshop screen. I hope that helps!

Evan

Evan, thank you so much for the tutorial, I enjoyed watching it and learned a great deal.

I already had a Cacoon (same idea as the bowl but larger) that I purchased from the Photography store quite some time ago. It came with the lamps on tripods as well. Plus I bought the bulbs $15 a peice (blue bulbs) In all I think I spent over $200 on the kit. Ouch!!

Also I've been working with ADobe for some time but still watching your video gave me some great tips and ideas and tools that I hadn't used before: Such as the signature tool. LOVE IT!

I tried the masking thing, got it to work once and then couldn't get it to work again after that. Not sure what I'm doing wrong, so I'll have to go rewatch the video again.

Anyhow, I just wanted to say, that from watching your video I did make some changes, such as the gradient paper and I did switch one of my blue (photography bulbs) to a florescent white light. It seems to make a difference I think.

I'm attaching my most recent photo that i took after making all the new changes. I love it. Now I'm going ot redo all my photos.

Oh and for the person that has the yellow photo? You should change the lighting setting on your camera. That will make a difference.

shari

Shari -

I'm so glad that you enjoyed the tutorial. Your attached photo is absolutely beautiful. Love your work! If you have trouble geting the masking to work, drop me a note directly and I'll do what I can to help walk you through it.

Have a great weekend -

Evan

thank you! and i thought it was the spaghetti stains...:rolleyes:

This is another great and generous effort by you, Evan. Thank you!

I had the bowl idea awhile back as well but as usual haven't acted on it yet. :oops: My original plan was to go to the Dollar Store and find one, but after reading Brimmy's sad saga about her hunt for the elusive bowl, I started to think about what else I could use. We don't have an IKEA around. So here's my solution.... an ice cream pail! I know everyone must have one of those around! :badgrin: What do you think?

As long as it isn't a solid color ice cream pail, more of a foggy look, would also work. Another option is to use a square or rectangular container. I've seen that done before.

shari

I also made a larger unit from a 'cake storage' platter. Not sure if that is the right name for it... But it is about 12" or so in diameter, somewhat taller and has a base that can be clipped on. This is really nice for storage of small parts (styrofoam, mounting pins, wax, gradient sheets, etc..). Just food for thought. Check out places like your local grocery for a translucent salad bowl or the container store occasionally has some nice containers that fit the bill. As you walk through the isles all of a sudden you see photo studios everywhere!

Evan