Gear recommendations for these kinds of photos?

Pauleeeeeeee

Sorry about the super novice questions here but basically I'm a tattooer who wants to start taking better photos of his tattoos. I take all my photos on my samsung galaxy s3 right now haha. Time to upgrade I think.

I really like the look of the photos taken by this tattooer.





The depth of field effect and warmth is something I really like. Along with the clarity obviously. These are the kind of shots I'd like to emulate.

I've been trying to educate myself on the basics of what I need for this but if anyone can offer some suggestions of what camera and lense would be best suited to this task it would be great.

I really really don't need the camera for anything other than taking photos like these. So if the stock lense that comes with a canon, etc would be good enough I'd get that. I also don't need or want really good video capabilities or anything else that would drive up the cost of the equipment I'll need.

I'm also planning on buying second hand so should be able to save some money there too haha

Skill Magill

Will the camera need to have wifi / 3G capabalities? I bought a second hand panasonic lumix tz-10, for €160, it can defo take these type of shots, but you have to attach it to a computer to upload to facebook and the like. Best of luck with you search

Cosmo K

It's not just the camera. Those shots were also processed in Lightroom or Photoshop, looks like a Lightroom preset to me.

Pauleeeeeeee

Cosmo K wrote: »

Those shots were also processed in Lightroom or Photoshop, looks like a Lightroom preset to me.

You positive about this? Only reason I'm asking is because most tattooers don't like messing with their photos after they have been taken so as not to give false impressions of what their stuff looks like in the flesh.

Cosmo K

The second one is definitely processed. Maybe the processing was done in camera or even on a mobile phone/tablet. Try "Snapseed", its a photo processing app for phones and tablets, it's hours of fun...

Pauleeeeeeee

Thanks for the tips but I'd really rather try to minimise any filtering or tampering of the photos so that they reflect their real life appearance better. I'm looking for nice photos but "natural" if you get me. Or is this contradicting what I'm looking for in comparison to the photos I originally posted? haha

cnocbui

Most compact cameras have small sensors, which usually means they have a deep depth of focus - in other words, things both near and far will be in focus.

They also don't tend to have very large apertures, also called fast apertures because they allow fast shutter speeds.

There is a relationship between the aperture and the size of the sensor and the depth of focus you can achieve. A fairly fast lens with a maximum aperture of say f2.8, is going to give a much deeper field of focus on a cameraphone then an f2.8 lens on a compact camera, which in turn will be deeper than f2.8 on a DSLR.

So in order to achieve that fairly shallow depth of focus in the first shot that yields the blurred background, you are going to need a fast lens on a compact camera that has good close-focus abilities or a reasonably fast lens on a DSLR or variations between.

The only compact camera with a fast lens and good close focus (macro) capabilities I am familiar with, is the Olympus XZ-1 and the more recent and expensive XZ-2.

As an example, I found this on Flickr taken with an XZ-1:

If looking at a camera with a larger sensor like a DSLR with an APS-C sized sensor, you would have many more options.

Cosmo K

Ok, lets talk cameras, whats your budget?

Corkbah

those images could have been done with a mobile phone and a steady hand ...nothing too amazing about them.

most mobile phones these days allow for a decent depth of field, your samsung should be enough to take similar pics ...just make sure you turn off the flash.

cnocbui

Pauleeeeeeee wrote: »

Thanks for the tips but I'd really rather try to minimise any filtering or tampering of the photos so that they reflect their real life appearance better. I'm looking for nice photos but "natural" if you get me. Or is this contradicting what I'm looking for in comparison to the photos I originally posted? haha

IMO, The colour balance and exposure are off. 'Natural' would be more like this:




I think those were likely straight out of the camera.

Pauleeeeeeee

I can get sharp photos of my tattoos generally and I know lighting will play an important part in helping me get better photos but I've yet to take a photo on my phone that looks as nice as those.

Taking a photo of a tattoo (especially the bigger ones that curve a bit around the body) can be an absolute pain because of the sheen of the skin from the tattoo being fresh coupled with the lighting in the room causing hotspots if the tattoo is too big to take a close up shot of. I just feel a better camera will help me overcome issues like that when my phone can't handle it. Maybe I'm wrong though?

Budget wise I was hoping to spend a maximum of €500 but obviously less than that would be great. I don't need loads of fancy features I just want to be able to take nice photos of the same quality of the ones I posted at the beginning of the thread.

I know I'll also have to do a bit of reading regardless but when it comes to this kind of thing I tend to end up reading stuff for weeks on end when without buying anything so want to try and avoid that this time haha

Pauleeeeeeee

Just checked out the Olympus XZ-1 there actually. Looks perfect.

Leftyflip

Second hand entry level DSLR by Nikon or canon with a 50mm f/1.8 would be perfect for that kind of stuff!

OldGoat

Pauleeeeeeee wrote: »

and I know lighting will play an important part in helping me get better photos

This.
Irrispective of what camera you are using you need to take control of the light. Using defused light to remove any specular highlighs or reflections off the skin/ink will dramatically improve your photos.
Lighting control can be done on the cheap but it does require a lot of reading around.
A secondhand entry level DSLR and an off camera flash along with a few household items to use as reflectors/diffusers will get you all you want from the photographs.

Pauleeeeeeee

So I ended up just saying "screw it" and buying a nice camera that has more capability than I'll probably ever need but I guess it's an investment at the end of the day I got a Canon PowerShot G15.

The next thing is figuring out lighting then.

Basically I tattoo in smallish square shaped room where the overheads are all flourescents and there's no natural light getting in. The lights are actually installed pretty wierd in that they are put along the centre of the room causing the walls to be fairly dimly lit.

I do use two high powered LED lamps to tattoo under though. So they are nice and bright but obviously have an inherent spot light type light that they give off.

I'm gonna give two more examples of photos of tattoos that I like and would like to emulate.

So maybe someone could give me a run down of how they would achieve these shots themselves. Is there some messing with stuff in software light Lightroom afterwards?

Apologies if it's too many questions to be asking at once. I get that the aperture is what needs to be adjusted when it comes to the depth of field effect but the warmth and general defused lighting in these photos is great.


The first shot here is in an area that I usually have some trouble with. The overhead lighting in my room causes a hot spot on the shoulder area quite frequently. Would it be best to just completely turn these lights off and work with the leds I have? Someone said that to me but it just seems like the room would be way too dark. And again, I just find it hard to believe that this tattooer is setting up light diffusers and bouncing light, etc for these shots. Could the lighting in his studio just be good for this kind of shot?




The second is this low down shot of the feet. Again the warmth (even if not to everyone's tastes) depth of field and softness of the lighting is great. Would anything special for lighting need to be done to get a shot like this?



Thanks for all the help everyone

Pauleeeeeeee

Well I got off my arse and did some studying and got to grips with some of the basics.

Think I'm semi getting the hang of it and I'm sure there's things that could be improved on but already my photos are looking much better.

Thanks for all the help