How to achieve "White out"

[45R]

I shot these two pictures today, I'm not so sure I'm happy with them. How do you guys achieve the white out backround effect? The first one is nice but could use some work on the depth. The second one is a little less than desired.

http://www.pbase.com/image/30437993.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/30438026.jpg

[toddb]

I've tried some white poster board. Three pieces, one on the bottom, and then the other two on the sides coming together towards the back. The problem with this simplistic method is that the seems show.

http://www.toddburke.net/productshots/images/ferrari.jpg
http://www.toddburke.net/productshots/images/sparkplug_car.jpg
http://www.toddburke.net/productshots/images/dcspc100.jpg

This is what I do for now until I can afford to get one of these:
http://store.tabletopstudio-store.com/ezlite.html
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?ci=1&sb=ps&pn=1&sq=desc&InitialSearch=yes&O=S earchBar&A=search&Q=*&shs=light+tent

[DaveG]

I shot these two pictures today, I'm not so sure I'm happy with them. How do you guys achieve the white out backround effect? The first one is nice but could use some work on the depth. The second one is a little less than desired.

http://www.pbase.com/image/30437993.jpg

http://www.pbase.com/image/30438026.jpg

You are asking about a couple of things. The first is a high key lighting method. I would suggest that you just do some research and read up on high key portrait lighting. It seems funny to suggest that these are portraits but they really are.

The other thing is depth of field. There may be no solutiuon to your problem based on the lens you are using and the subject to camera distance. I mean if your lens stops down to f22 and part of the gun is still out of focus what is your next step? Well you could move farther away but that isn't all that good an idea.

The real solution is to use a tilt/shift lens. If you are doing a lot of these table top images it might be a useful investment. If you are doing only a few then perhaps you can rent one for a day.

With a regular lens the plane of "in focus" is always parallel with the back of the camera. You change the depth with the aperture but the plane is always parallel with the "film". With a tilt lens you can make this plane of focus "lie down" and you'd be able to get the front of the gun to the back in focus.

This is all old view camera stuff. On those cameras the lens sits at the end of a bellows. You tilt the lens forward and the plane of focus has changed to match the front of the gun extending to the back. In most cases this works well, but imagine that you had a pencil sticking up throught the trigger gard of the gun. In your shot if you focused on the trigger guard the pencil should be sharp even though the end of the barrel and the butt would be out of focus. In my example of tilting the lens the whole gun would be sharp but the pencil tip almost certainly would not, as it extends up and out of the depth of field.

If you tilt the lens down this is called (duh) a tilt. If you pivot the lens sideways (a sideways tilt) it's called swing. Swing might be useful if you are trying to maintain focus on a building "moving away" from you.

The shift part of these lenses have nothing to do with the plane of depth of field. If you "rise" the lens then you can compensate for the "falling over backwards" effect you get when you tilt the whole camera to take a picture of a building. I had a Nikkor 35 mm f2.8 shift lens (no tilt) and that trick wore off very quickly. The Canon's will do both tilt AND shift and that would be very useful.

Canon makes three different tilt shift lenses. They aren't cheap but they do the job. Here is a recent posting that should give you some more insight into their use: http://www.outbackphoto.com/workflow/wf_42/essay.html

[Scottes]

I'm really confused by DaveG's answer, thinking that I'm missing something in your question.

Are you trying to achieve a solid white background around (and under?) the object you're shooting? As ifyou wanted a photo where the background could be easily removed or something?

What is it about the first photo that "is nice" ?
And in the second photo what points are "a little less than desired" ?

[SeanDempsey]

Even Photoshop LE or any basic graphics editor could "white out" the shots in a matter of minutes, or less.

Why not use that?

[45R]

What is it about the first photo that "is nice" ?
And in the second photo what points are "a little less than desired" ?

I'm really new with this so I want to thank you all for being patient. At this time the only gear that I have is a Point and Shoot digital, the Canon 10D and a 420EX flash with omni bounce. The only prior photography experience that I've had is shooting macros on a tiny tripod not for the 10D.

So lets get started

The nice part of the first picture was that I was able to achieve the "white out" affect that I wanted. Its obvious that the picture can be improved with more dept but the "white out" part was what I wanted.

The second picture I would not get all of the white comforter to "White out". You can still see the stitching of the blanket.

Now you ask me
Even Photoshop LE or any basic graphics editor could "white out" the shots in a matter of minutes, or less.

Why not use that?

I'm just trying to learn new techniques at this point for lighting. The more tools a man has at his disposal the better he will be equiped when the time comes to do a job. :) I actually have at my mercy a copy of Photoshop CS which I did use to create the white out effect on the Ferrari picture after this post, but when I shoot pictures I wont want to have to worry about doing much post-processing. Although I'm not opposed to using it in a jam :)

DaveG-
Thanks for the technical information. Its written well enough for a newbie to understand. :) At this time new lenses are out of the question but I'll study the link you sent me! Thanks for adding a few words to my photography vocabulary :)

[robertwgross]

Try seamless white paper in wide widths.

---Bob Gross---

[arumdevil]

Definitely use white paper or board or something similar. the duvet you used has too many folds and shadows.

[chris.bailey]

can look really good to use thin white paper which is lit from underneath as well as above, gives the background a pure white glow.

[Vegas Poboy]

Basically DaveG's answer is correct, you need to look into high key lighting & product shots. If you're tryint o list Itemst for sale it does'nt hurt to have a light shadow on the items. You can achieve this with a basic two to three light table top setup. I would check photoflex website on tips.