New CCI Book on Lighting.

[T. Ashley McGrew]

Jason

Thanks for sharing your follow-up on this. I think you saved some folks some hard earned bucks.

Ashley

[JasonO]

Yeah, I bought it via their website with a card. The book (all 54 pages of it) is strictly on lighting museum objects, though there are a few things about camera types and file types. As I said, the information on lighting for conservation use is really nice, but I was hired to do collection object photography only for documentation and the internet...

There is very little on color correction in the book. A few tips on that: Invest in a good colorchecker like this one (http://www.adorama.com/DKMCC.html) or a Kodak one (cheaper, but smaller http://www.adorama.com/KKQ13.html). If you shoot in the RAW format (I shoot Nikons so it is technically a NEF file) there is a great program included with Photoshop CS5 called Camera RAW 5.0. If you open your RAW files in that program, there is a tool called the White Balance tool which will automatically correct your white balance and color. Even better, if you shoot multiple objects with the same lighting, you can bulk process them (though my computer has a tough time handling more than 10 at once). When I first started this job and began using the RAW format, I found this online and it was a big help (http://www.peachpit.com/articles/art...13545&seqNum=3).

Concerning lighting, I found the blog of a product photographer from Atlanta who gives great tips on shooting difficult objects, many of which can transfer to a museum situation (http://www.akelstudio.com/blog/). Though, some of the things he needs to worry about (pure white background) are not that important in a museum except for publication.

Jason