Cloning Beer

[jim.neff]

Howdy folks, this will be my first picture share. Got my start using this ghetto light tent I made when I had to take pictures of my wife's jewelry for web site sales. It's made of PVC pipes, black poster board, a white table cloth and a CFL light on either side.

Here is the original

And here is the post-processed version.



Camera: Nikon D40
Exposure: 0.02 sec (1/50)
Aperture: f/3.5
Focal Length: 18 mm
ISO Speed: 800
Exposure Bias: 0/6 EV
Maximum Lens Aperture: 36/10
Metering Mode: Center Weighted Average
Date and Time: 2009:01:08 20:37:09

(did I miss any exif data?)

My question, can you tell it was post-processed? What could I have done better? I'm thinking a white background instead of black, but I kind of like the grey to black fade in the middle. What do you think of the background? I did no white balancing, couldn't find my tripod and was in a hurry to get something done for my project365 today. What about the angle? I tried one looking more at an angle but it was out of focus and looked a little funny with the lens curving out the sides of the glass made it look funny. This was more of an exercise in cloning but other critical comments are appreciated.

[Japaslavian]

To prevent having to do that much cloning, you should just get another piece of white (or maybe black in this case) cloth to cover the front. Then just cut a small hole in it for the camera lens.
You'll save yourself a lot of time in the end.

[RoyL]

Don't understand why you would want to clone beer, I would be drinking it!!

The beer does not look fluid enough, there should be some transparency to it. As Japaslavian has said, follow. This will spread the light around in the tent and allow you to get a better shot that requires less editing. Experiment with the light tent, move lights around or add light. Looking at the original image the light falling is harsh, the light needs filtering so it falls on the object or floods the tent with light without shadow.

The angle looks ok.

If I was to critique the image for a comp or assignment, which I do not do anyway , I would have to reject the image as you can immediately see that the image has had cloning work done on it. The area that you have cloned needs to be blended in better, if you used layers for the cloning you could use the Blending Modes to help mix it all together.

Also, when I do work like this I always add a Gaussian Blur of about 1.0 which will very very slightly soften the image But will also cover many sins. You can then do a very fine sharpen on top to bring out as much detail as can be found in the image.

Check out some more articles on tents, I haven't checked on the DPS forum but I am sure that there would be info and there is heaps of good advice on the net.

[OsmosisStudios]

Originally Posted by RoyL

The beer does not look fluid enough, there should be some transparency to it.

Looks like Stout: which is generally pretty opaque.

I couldnt really tell what you had cloned, so you did a good job there.

Shooting glass (especially nicely polished stuff) is VERY difficult without getting reflections, and youve countered that rather well. It's missing it's catchlight on the glass, but other than that is fine.

Food is also very difficult to shoot, as it always changing from "just cooked" to "been sitting on a plate for a fortnight". Its a challenge, but can be very rewarding too, especially when its your own food.

[jim.neff]

Thanks for the replies. Like I said in my OP I was more concerned with the post processing aspects than anything else. I feel that is something I need to get a lot better at.

Japaslavian - Your right I should have taken more time and set this up. Thanks for the tip on a front cover. I will try that next time.

RoyL - Thanks for your input. I did this in GIMP and am not even that comfortable at cloning yet. I'll try to play with the Gaussian Blur and see if I can get it better. I see what you mean now about seeing the cloning marks. Maybe I will try this again and take more time with it after reading up on how to do better cloning. I agree that I should have shot better the first time and keep the PP down to a minimum.

Osmosis - Your right, it is a very dark beer. Actually a home brew my father in-law made. Maybe I could experiment with setting up a light from behind the glass. This was taken about 10 mins after pouring so I lost most of the head. And for some reason my father in-law's home brews never have much carbonation. I wonder how I could add some back in?

Thanks again for the feedback and the opportunity this forum has given me to ask for critique.