Advice for watch photography

A forum to ask questions, post setups, and generally discuss anything having to do with photomacrography and photomicroscopy.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

ChrisR
Site Admin
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Joined: Sat Mar 14, 2009 3:58 am
Location: Near London, UK

Post by ChrisR »

I don't see watches being any different
No, a watch is not like an insect, or a glass object.
With a watch glass you have a reflective transparent plane in front of a more or less isotropically diffusing surface - the watch dial.
You want the light to come from the dial not the glass.

Light + dark = light.
So make sure the reflection from the glass is DARK, absolutely NOT an evenly illuminated white surface which is what you get if you use a
"light tent ... closed on all 5 sides with just the lens poking through".


Then ALL the light is coming from the dial, which you would arrange to be lit however you want - directionally or diffused.
And you don't see the watch glass or some fogging reflection, getting in the way..

Avoid circular pol filters if you can. Frequency dependence of the polarisation vector can lead to funny colours showing up while you're adjusting for extinction. If they're what you have, flip them over to make the rotation irrelevant.
Chris R

macroring1
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed May 31, 2017 1:35 pm

Post by macroring1 »

Many thanks for all the advices

I have purchased a better light tent and closed up all the spaces for any reflections and the results have improved.

I still struggle with a little bit of dark shadows on some parts, but with moving the watch in certain position compared to the camera they can go away.

What I struggle now is to get a picture with every detail everywhere in focus, like these two:

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0146/ ... 1504019255

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0146/ ... 1504019255

I can get the center focused but than the rest near the edges will not be as sharp. I also can get some points very well lit but others dark. On the 2 photos just above, focus seems uniform everywhere and light seems uniform on every part of the watch.

Shall I increase the exposure and reduce light to achieve this? Or there is another technique?

enricosavazzi
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Joined: Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:41 pm
Location: Västerås, Sweden
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Post by enricosavazzi »

macroring1 wrote:What I struggle now is to get a picture with every detail everywhere in focus
...
Shall I increase the exposure and reduce light to achieve this? Or there is another technique?
Increasing the exposure time will not help to increase DOF.

Aside from using a higher f/value (and losing some of the detail to diffraction), the only practical way is focus stacking, which should be entirely feasible for these subjects and will probably require only a small number of images per stack (probably something around 5 images, maybe even less), which is well within the realm of manual stacking.

There is plenty about focus stacking on these boards, although most of the advice is about much larger magnification and automated shooting of stacks composed of large number of exposures. For your purpose, you won't need automated stacking unless you need to shoot hundreds of subjects.

Some cameras, coupled to specific lenses, offer in-camera focus stacking, which should work fine with your subjects and require little or no retouching in post-processing.
--ES

macroring1
Posts: 9
Joined: Wed May 31, 2017 1:35 pm

Post by macroring1 »

Thank you for the response.

Just one last question, how do I do with the shadows that occur at certain places? With the new light box they are reduced compared to before but some still are there. On the two examples up there there is no shaddow anywhere. How is this achieved? I even added a white panel around my lens (cutout from an old light box)

Shall I try with a tele lense from further away or staying with my 100mm L macro is my best option?

enricosavazzi
Posts: 1474
Joined: Sat Nov 21, 2009 2:41 pm
Location: Västerås, Sweden
Contact:

Post by enricosavazzi »

macroring1 wrote:Thank you for the response.

Just one last question, how do I do with the shadows that occur at certain places? With the new light box they are reduced compared to before but some still are there. On the two examples up there there is no shaddow anywhere. How is this achieved? I even added a white panel around my lens (cutout from an old light box)

Shall I try with a tele lense from further away or staying with my 100mm L macro is my best option?
I am not sure we are talking about the same thing, but in my experience the "shadows" are reflections of surrounding dark objects on mirrored/polished surfaces of the subject. You can eliminate them with a light cube/tent that completely surrounds the subject, except for the reflections of the dark front of the lens (mostly the front element itself).

You can indeed reduce somewhat the size of this particular reflection by using a lens of long focal length, as long as you have enough space inside the light tent/cube, but this is not effective if you replace the lens with one of longer focal length but equal speed. For example, if you replace a 50 mm f/2.8 lens with a 300 mm f/2.8, the much larger front element of the 300 mm will largely negate the advantage of the increased subject-to-lens distance. Using a 300 mm f/4 (or even a 300 mm f/5.6 or f/8, assuming you can find one) will be better. Finding a large enough light tent is the next problem.

I remember one or more of the habitual posters on this site experimenting with a beam splitter to eliminate this type of reflection in macrophotography of shiny convex beetles. The principle is using the beam splitter in front of the lens to provide a coaxial illumination of the subject, adjusted in intensity to match the illumination through the light tent/diffuser (in principle, the goal is to completely surround the subject with a uniform light source, without a dark opening for the lens). This is the only way I know of to eliminate this type of dark reflection, but in practice it is difficult to get everything right. It may also reduce the image contrast through flare from the beam splitter surfaces, especially if an uncoated beam splitter is used, like a microscope cover glass. It may potentially also introduce some optical aberrations, although probably not a noticeable problem with a lens stopped down to f/8-f/11 and focused in the close-up range.

Other traditional ways that may help to reduce the dark reflections are experimenting with different amounts of tilt of the subject to try and find an orientation that minimizes the problem, and retouching the dark reflections away in post-processing.
--ES

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