Group Photo and Progress Update

Class pics time!
I finally bit the bullet and purchased a black velvet photo box for taking decent photos of my progress. I won’t be using it for everyday, on the bench working shots, but when I reach certain points, I want to see the progress through a finer lens.

I realized my phone camera was too good at adapting and correcting for what it perceives as imbalances. Great for larger, outdoor or wide shot stuff, but not so good at focusing on small things up close with cluttered backgrounds. The biggest issue is color and white balance, and over sharpening. Yeah, I could use a color correction board, but I don’t want to have to set up a bunch of stuff every time. The key is to limit the amount of color and light data the phone camera takes in, this way it balances on just the items I want. The camera is smart enough to know the majority of the dark area should be black (balancing for darkest point) so keeps them black. I purchased this one off of Amazon for $32 and makes a huge difference.

So how well did this work? Great! All of these shots are without any color or balance adjustments – this is straight off of my phone and this is pretty much to life. It takes 30 seconds to set up and break down, but in the future I plan to have it permanently set up so I can just pop models in it and shoot.

On to the gallery!