PRAM finished!

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Very nice reg. Congratulations.

Photos; outdoors - either on a cloudy day or in the shade. Use a neutral background - I use a couple of blue microfiber towels.

Let us know how it dives.

Henrik
 
Well, the RAM already has a few scratches, compliments of impatience screwing in the nozzle. I have dove these regs several times, I just took it apart to clean it a while back and decided to go for the chrome. In some ways the RAM breathes a little better, I have no idea why. They're both really good performers.

Once I get the labels, I'll try to get a few proper photos.
 
Very nice.

IMO, it is nice to have a nicely chrome regulator. To me the most important is that good chrome adds a good corrosion protection which translates into much longer times between needing service. Aesthetics is also important, but to me it is secondary.

I guess I just don’t worry at all about scratches since I know that if need be I can always have it re-chromed. All my regulators have some scratches. The problem to me is when some chrome is missing.


The advice you got abut the lighting and avoiding the use of the flash is good.

Another alternative is to get daylight lamps. My wife bought me a couple of day light color balanced lamps to take pictures of chromed regulator. She got them at a local photography shop and they were not expensive. They are just inexpensive aluminum lamp reflectors. The special daylight color balanced bulbs are not that expensive either.

Having the two lamps allows me to adjust the light angle while look at the screen on the camera to see that I am not getting bad reflections. That being said, even with good control of the lighting, sometimes I find it difficult to take really good pictures of very shiny chrome. The chrome can reflect objects and colors that I didn't even notice that were there.
 
Taking pictures of shiny stuff can drive you mad. I talked once to a guy who did catalog shots for a plumbing company and he said it was just about the hardest thing to do well in the entire world of photography. Best I can recall he used a sort of tent made of thin white cloth that would allow light through, with all the lighting outside it, and just a little slit for the camera to shoot through.

I usually do it in daylight, but out of the sun, on a mottled gray background (an old formica sink cutout) and use a few sheets of white poster board to put a little extra light where it is needed. Another trick is to use a couple umbrella reflectors with the lights pointing up at them. I also sometimes use Krylon Dulling Spray (mainly because I found a couple cans of it at a closeout store) which knocks the shine down a bit so the reflections aren't so distinct.

I ran into a guy who was shooting some old tools at a flea market, for National Geographic, I think. He went the other direction, using a box lined with black velvet he would put shiny things in, to kill all the reflections. And then a woman I knew who used to specialize in photographing crafts had a large platform with a translucent white acrylic top, which she would backlight from below to eliminate all shadows, then use umbrella refectors to light from the top.

One handy trick, in this day of digital cameras, is to hook the camera up to a laptop or larger viewing screen, so you can better compose the picture, and see any odd lighting effects, juxtapostions etc, that won't show up in a little viewfinder.

Like I said, it can drive you crazy!

Oh, that is one gorgeous regulator!

That being said, even with good control of the lighting, sometimes I find it difficult to take really good pictures of very shiny chrome. The chrome can reflect objects and colors that I didn't even notice that were there.
 
Once upon a time when cameras were real and men were men and women were women and regulators had two hoses, we could bounce the flash. The hot shoe mounted strobe could be rotated to point to a reflector to greatly soften the light or detached and held to the side or above.

The direct flash from a digicamie is so close to the lens that all you get is direct bounce back, kind of like shooting a 22 rifle into a steel plate at three feet and wondering why there is a bullet stuck in your eyeball.

Maybe back off some and then zoom and cant the reflective object such that the flash does not directly bounce straight back to the digicamie.

But, who takes pictures of regulators anyways?

N
 
That pic looks pretty good (the reg looks sweet!).

You can always point a flashlight at the reg from an off angle. It won't look like the pictures of John C. Ratliff, Luis H, or oxyhacker, but should work for forum pics.
 
I finally got around to getting my PRAM and RAM chromed and back together, they look great! I borrowed a camera and tried to take some photos, but they turned out horrible with the flash; this is the only one that even comes close to looking like the reg. I'm still waiting on a yoke label and round label for the RAM. I'd love some suggestions on how to get good photos of the shiny chrome without the camera creating so much glare. Is it as simple as not using the flash, and if so, I guess I have to figure out how to turn the flash off.

Matt you can a diffuser on the flash. You can put the one on the flash or use the walls/ceiling as the diffuser. Or just simply take the reg outside and use the natural light
 
Looks great but it will probably breath better with a few scratches.:eyebrow:

Well, I almost guessed what he was going to say.....come on now Awap. Tell him what you really think. "Will it make it breathe X number of dollars better?"
 
Back in the old day when cars had shiny chrome bumpers and trim they would spray a slight dulling film over the chrome to prevent the bounce back and reflections when doing advertising photos.
 
...gotta love 'new' TOYZ ! Will you just tool around in the lake/quarry with it or really use it in the open ocean, at depth, on a dive trip as a primary reg?
 

Back
Top Bottom