Guitar Shots

I'm starting to take a bunch of pictures of my guitars and music gear (7 guitars in total) I tried about 8 different setups, and only got 3 shots I like so far. Think its going to take a while before I'm finished the lot. I intend to probably sell some of the guitars when I've nice product photos of them. So I want to show them in their best light, but I can't ethically heal any scratches

I know I'll have to go wide and show the whole guitar at some stage but I plan to do those later in the week.

I'm reasonably happy with the first shot here, really like the 2nd, but I may have missed something. Am I on the right track so-far?

Image 1) Yamaha APX-500 Semi - Fretboard and headstock

It may be my monitor but these look really, really dark.

I'm not a fan of the shallow DOF on the 1st. The neck is leading us into the picture, but it's very off-putting because it's OOF.

If you want a tight DOF around the headstock, I'd suggest having the neck fading off into the background.

SOK wrote in post #6228836
It may be my monitor but these look really, really dark.

I'm not a fan of the shallow DOF on the 1st. The neck is leading us into the picture, but it's very off-putting because it's OOF.

If you want a tight DOF around the headstock, I'd suggest having the neck fading off into the background.

Thanks for taking the time to comment SOK.

They are dark, but not underexposed. This was intended as mostly these would be used in dark environments, but I should probably also get some images of them in good light also. Its a bit of a compromise with the dark colours and reflective metal surfaces to get a shot without either blown out.

So basically you want the headstock image upside down, or also with the neck within the DOF? I'll probably do a shot that shows the neck in focus along with the binding and fret markers later today, and another closeup of the headstock.

Maybe I could try a HDR at some stage as the other guitars are even darker. One of them has a dark blue with sparkles in it, and mirror chrome and black features, that will be fun Anybody have any tips on that?