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Hi everyone,

I was overwhelmed by the reception in the forum an in my "Greetings from Germany" Introduction thread we already covered quite a bit of topics very briefly. One of them was how to take pictures of watches and movements. My primary goal here is to take pictures of watches and of course  of movements in the course of disassembly.

I was encouraged to start this thread so that's what I do know. I start with the equipment I have to take pictures of  movements or watches.

After several attempts became evident that I needed some source of light because the lens are so close to the object that  some kind of desk lamp or anything else won't work. So the first and most important part you need is what was formerly a ring flash. I looked at this special accessory and found it terribly expensive. But luckily there are alternatives now based on LEDs. So I got myself such an LED ring light for roughly 50 EUR.

Another thing I did not had were some proper macro lens. Again here:  they are awfully pricey.  And also I found some alternative here in form of macro extension tubes. They actually extend the length of the lens and I would say the focal length. I have to admit I'm not too good in physics that I can explain exactly what's going on here.

Fact is that they work. If you like the original ones from Canon (like in my case) you pay an awful lot the amount of money.  since I wasn't sure if this is going to work I decided to go for a less expensive third-party version from Amazon for about 30 EUR. I read a comments on Amazon that there is a threat that the camera gets damaged if you take away the lens with the macro extension or just the lens while the camera is switched on. Although I knew that I did it once and nothing happened. I might have been lucky  so I won't do it again and strictly encourage you to switch off the camera for removing those extension rings.

 

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Edited by AlexanderB
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First of all I have to say that I am not a professional photographer. I love taking pictures with my DSLR, read a lot and practiced quite a bit. If anyone who reads what I posted find that need that this needs correction I will be more than happy if you just post your comments.  I can always learn new stuff.

 I'm also fairly new to this hobby of watchmaking or better watch repair. I read a lot,  watched tons of movies and try to figure out how to disassemble and assemble a movement. What became pretty obvious the very first time I did that was that I need to track what I do. Taking pictures of every single step I do will allow me to not only disassemble the watch but being able to get it working again. So what I tried to figure out was how do I take pictures off the movement in the process of disassembling it.

 First I used a little camera in macro mode and just did shots. But the quality was sort of poor, they were not as sharp as I expected them to be and the pictures were often blurred. Since I have a Canon EOS 70D as well as a tripod I started getting into it. I already showed you the material I bought additionally and in those pictures here you can see how this looks like.

The lens are actually the 18-135mm that came with the camera. When I use the extension ring (actually I use only the 31mm ring) I need to fully extend the lens 135mm zoom. You can imagine that there is not too much light left anymore especially  tiny little things like a movement. That's why a profile like source is inevitable.

You can also clearly see how close the lens are to the object.

This is the setup I use to take pictures. In my next post I will give you an example of the settings.

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That's a great start, Alexander!

I was thinking a bout a "ring" sort of illumination/lamp but didn't know what to get. I got a Cannon EOS Revel T3 I have never used, it is brand new in a box with all the stuff ever! Including some micro lenses but I will rummaged in the bag and see, later, what I got and list it here. Maybe you can "stir" me in the right direction as how to use the stuff! Thanks in advance.

Cheers,

Bob

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When using extension rings you cannot use autofocus anymore.

Rule number one:  always use manual focus.

Most important is to set up  a proper exposure. Some of you may know that you have full control over speed and aperture on your camera. If you just use program P or any kind of auto mode the camera will decide what you see on your picture. But that's what you don't want to have. In this special case the camera will always look for as much light as possible. Which means open the aperture as far as possible. But there is an animal called depth of field which means what part of your picture is focused.

I took two pictures of this movement I just got from eBay. The first one was taken with an aperture of 36 and a shutter speed of 1/6th second. What I did was use the A mode that allows me to set the aperture and the camera decides on the shutter speed.

 You can clearly see that almost every part of the picture is in focus or sharp.

 On the next picture I selected an aperture of 5.6 (this is what the camera would choose in P mode)  and a shutter speed of 1/250s. You can clearly see that only a very short range is actually sharp this makes it sometimes difficult to clearly see the different wheels in different layers.

Rule number two:  select A mode and use an aperture  which is quite high maybe 16 or above. You don't have to fully close the aperture like I did in my example.

By the way in order not to blur the picture I used an infrared remote control to press the shutter. This will eliminate any vibration from the tripod and camera system. If you don't have such a device you can always use the automatic timer. Set it to 2s and you are fine.

Cheers Alexander

 

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One more thing: I just saw that I did some mistakes / typos. I used my new Dragon Naturally Speaking Dictation system that is now integrated in my Edge browser. Unfortunately I cannot edit my posts. This seems to be possible for just a few minutes. Maybe Mark can adjust the timeout a bit.

Cheers Alexander

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Welcome to the forum Alexander, and many thanks and congratulations for your first posts (presentation and this one)!! 

This information about the best way of photographing the movements with not expensive solutions is most useful.

It was all clearly presented, I have only one question: what kind of tripod do you use to hold the camera?

Best wishes for you in this exciting hobby for watch lovers!

Gui

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Thank you Gui,

Well I use a relatively expensive Tripod from MeFoto (A1350Q1C). It is quite expensive, roughly 200 EUR but it can be used as a monopod as well and is quite light (2kg incl. the bag) but yet stable.

For taking photos of movements you can use any tripod if you use a remote control. The stability of tripods also reflects to its behavior in windy conditions. No issue here.

I hope this answers your question.

Cheers Alexander 

 

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This is a very interesting thread and just like with watches, you can go as far and as deep as you like into this subject.......and spend from relative little money to thousands on equipment. Even though I spend a lot on money on photography equipment, I still believe that it is the know-how of the photographer which makes / or breaks the picture. You can buy a fast BMW, but a good race-driver probably still beats you driving a Fiat Punto. So what I'm trying to say, it's the know-how, not so much the sophistication / price of the equipment.

Maybe I go way overboard with my explanation, so feel free to skip what is not of interest. I try to be a brief as possible and what is of interest of watch macro-photography and /or taking photo's off your complete watch (perhaps for selling purposes)

Photography; Greek photós or phós = light, graphé = lines or drawing; drawing with light. So the uppermost important thing in the whole photography is........you guessed it: Light, or rather the refection of it.

Light itself is a whole science, the spectrum goes from gamma-rays to radio frequencies, but since we humans are nearly blind, we only see a small sliver of it, between ultra-violet and infra-red, or from about 380nm to 780nm.

light spectrum.jpg

White sun light isn't white. It consist of many colors and only visible for us is between the ultra-violet and infra red. Clearly visible with a prism

prism.jpg

To distinguish between the colors, light "Temperature" is used, expressed in Kelvin.

light temperature.jpg             spectrum1.jpg

When taking pictures of a mechanical movement with an artificial light source (flash-light or lamp), the light-color is of less important. But when you take a photo of the whole watch, and you like to show its true colors, it certainly becomes. Artificial light, even though it may appear white, hasn't got the full color spectrum. LED-light has only a small sliver of all the existing colors. The apparent color of an item is the reflection of that specific color out of all the colors in the spectrum of the light source. If the light source hasn't got that specific color in its spectrum, it won't show up. For example, by the yellow Sodium-vapor lamps ( monochromatic light) used in outdoor lighting like motor-ways, the colors of illuminated objects are not easily to distinguish because they are seen almost entirely by their reflection of this narrow bandwidth yellow light. Something to remember if you have a very colorful object.

Now, as some side information, a digital camera is a funny thing. The light-sensitive chip doesn't see what we see. Even more peculiar are our eyes. Our color perception depends on the tricolour sensitivity of the cones in our retina, to know red / green & blue. Green has the overall balance, hence we see so much green. Digital Photography has to deal with this human phenomenon. If your digital camera would not have the software to twist and tweak the photo you just took to suite our eyes / brains, you would think the camera is crap, but in fact it sees the world more as it is.

This was perhaps a long introduction into the "white-balance" option on your camera. To twist and tweak the photo to the liking of your eyes and brains, the light-temperature can be adjusted, from cool to warm light. In the winter, the light is cool and harsh. Harsh it is mid-day summer. A LED-ring light may have a too cool color, so now you can tweak it to a more pleasant warmer-color. But again, if a specific color of a watch is not represented in the light-source, it won't show up!

Next article I like to explain a bit more about exposure, the ration between aperture / shutter time and depth of field. This in case you have, like me, extension rings which don't have communication with the camera and everything has to be done manually. Of course, if people think it all gets too complicated, please let me know! It save you & me lots of time ;)

rings.jpg

Lens.jpg

 

Edited by Endeavor
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Endeavor,

wow, I am overwhelmed by your post. Excellent material. I am sure everyone can pick something out of it.

Regarding the tube extensions mine fortunately provide communication and it works well. They are made of plastic but very durable and I have no problems.

Looking very much forward to your next post. Thank you!

Cheers Alexander

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My take on Exposure. To get an image onto light-sensitive material, be it a film or a light-sensitive sensor, the reflection of its light needs to be of a certain quantity, or Exposure. Little reflection, or light intensity expressed in LUX, the more time is required to get the correct exposure. The higher the intensity of the light reflection, the less time is needed to get the correct exposure. The amount of exposure is determined by the sensitivity of the film/sensor, expressed in ASA or ISO, and the size of the film/sensor. The higher the ASA or ISO, the less light-intensity x exposure time is required. The lower the ISO, the longer the light-intensity x exposure time is required, but, certainly with film, the higher the quality of the picture / colors. In the "old" days ASA 25 was a lot used by professionals. To a certain extend, this still counts for digital photography. If you wish, you can turn up the ISO of your digital camera and take pictures by night without flash......but don't complain about the quality though.......

The size of the film/sensor is also important; think of the old Hasselblad camera's. In digital camera's there are different sizes of sensors. Most lower to medium range camera's do have a sensor of 22.2 x 14.8mm, the more expensive camera's have "full-frame", 36 x 24mm, like the old film. Of course there are smaller sensors like in smart-phones etc, who claim the have even more mega-pixels then Full-frame sensors. I won't go into this, but it's a lot of sales propaganda & BS.

camera-sensor-size-19.jpg

A camera lens, or better an objective, is a collection of lenses. Each of these lenses will absorb light and it is the size (diameter), the number of lenses and quality of the material used which determine how much light leaves the objective compared to how much enters it. There is more to it like Entrance pupil, exit pupil, magnification etc, but suffise to say that the lower the "F" number, the more light gets through it. F1.8 is normal, F1.4 or F1.2 is very good. Generally speaking, Zoom objectives loose more light than fixed objectives and don't have these low "f" numbers unless you talk about very expensive material.

Lens.jpg

The objective on the picture has a maximum aperture opening of f1.8. Each "F-stop" higher reduces the amount of light through the lens by halve. So, with f2.8 only halve of the light which enters at f1.8, is let through. With f4, another halve is cut, 4x times less than f1.8, and so on. The smallest aperture on this lens is f22. There are also stops in between the "full-stops", called "halve stops".

Exposure is a curtain shutter time x (times) the light through the lens. If you change the aperture, make it for example smaller (towards f22), the shutter time has to increase. Say a good exposure requires f5.6 and 1/125 seconds. If you were to change the f5.6 to f8, (reduce the amount of light by halve) the shutter time has to be double as long; in this case 1/60 of a second. For f11 = 1/30s, f16 = 1/15s and the other way, for f1.8 = 1/1000 sec.

Depth of field: the smaller the aperture, greater the depth if field. Pinhole camera's don't have any objectives, but due to the size of the little hole, they still produced sharp pictures because of their high depth of field. This phenomena is very important in photography and also in macro-photography. In "normal" photography you sometimes like to have a small depth of field, to blur the back-ground so it doesn't distract from the main-object. You use the highest possible aperture, be it f1.2, f1.4 of f1.8.

balls.jpg

In macro-photography, which I know very little off, I guess you like to have the biggest depth of field, i.e. f16 of f22. To keep the same exposure, the shutter time has to go up (longer) and therefore taking hand-held macro-pictures becomes very problematic.......that is if you want, next to the right exposure, also a sharp picture :biggrin:

With the extension rings like I have, the camera can not electrically adjust the aperture, so the objective needs to have a separate aperture ring which can adjusted by hand. This can be useful / cheaper if you have old objectives laying around. The camera can/will still assist you with focusing if you start with the lens wide open, f1.8. Once sharp, you manually start to close the aperture to f16 or f22, to get the highest depth of field. The amount of light let through the objective, which still can be measures by the camera's LUX meter, determines the shutter speed. If your camera doesn't help you with the shutter speed, you have to determine the correct exposure with the objective full open and work out the shutter-time required at f16 or f22, as in the examples given above.

If you don't have any objectives with a separate aperture ring, your only option is to source extension rings like what Alexander has. Going by Alexander's info, they seem to have come down in price a lot.

The good thing about digital is, that you can take as many trial-pictures as you like to find the correct exposure, this was certainly not the case when working with (expensive) film.

Here a picture similar to my first camera in the '60's.......I think 12 exposures.....so you better be sure..... ;)

folding_camera.jpg

 

 

 

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And endeavor also contributed which is excellent since by the time both awesome persons finish this thread we will all be able to take amazing and most useful pictures of our watches: being it for our own enjoyment, keep track of our work or...ta da! post our walkthroughs on the site!:thumbsu:

How about that!

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Hi folks,

I'd like to comment a bit on ISO, not as deep as Endeavor, more of a practical approach. BTW I still use the term 'lens' since this is what 'photographic objectives' are called casually as far as I'm concerned. That probably distinguishes me from a professional photographer B)

Actually the exposure of a picture is influenced by these three parameters:

  • Shutter speed
  • Aperture
  • ISO

In the old days ISO was also called the speed of a film (roll). This parameter was set by choosing the film as Endeavor already explained. Switching ISOs while taking pictures back then? Only if you had a second or even third camera (body). I usually used ISOs of 64, 100, 200 or 400 at most. The ISO 400 roll was very sensitive to light and had a perceptible grain. When I took black and whites I sometimes picked a 400 roll because of the grain.

But when we take pictures of movements or entire watches we don't want to have a visible 'grain' or 'noise' instead we want crisp and clear pictures (unless we're getting into arts... but Photoshop can help us with that).

Modern digital cameras actually set all three parameters in full Auto mode. When the light is low the cameras wants you to make still sharp pictures and raise the ISO (high ISO = highly sensitive to light but... big grain or as we say today considerable noise) instead of lowering the shutter speed as Endeavor already explained and sometimes raise the ISO up to ridiculous values.

If we use a tripod, which I highly recommend for watch or movement photography, we can allow ourselves low shutter speeds and with this low ISO values. The two pictures of the movement I showed above were both taken with ISO 200.

Summary for movement photography with a DSLR to this point

Equipment

  1. Use a tripod. Can be inexpensive but make sure it is not too wobbly that it shakes when the mirror moves up and down (can be!). If you can afford: spend 150-200 EUR on that. Believe it or not: there is a difference.
  2. Use a set of macro extension tubes if you cannot (or don't want to) afford expensive macro lens. Take the ones that still connect the lens with the camera so that the full electronics is working. Not to be misunderstood: macro lens are much better but very expensive. I am happy with the extension tubes.
  3. For movements an LED ring light is useful. I will make some tests on taking entire watches but I assume that the results will be poor. See my comments below.
  4. Use an IR remote control instead of the shutter release button on the camera. This prevents any vibration when pressing the shutter. I got myself an inexpensive third party remote control for less than 15 EUR for my Canon. It cannot harm the camera. The worst thing is: it won't work.

Taking the picture

  1. Mount the camera to the tripod and mount the LED ring light.
  2. Set ISO fix to 100 or 200. Not more than that.
  3. Chose a proper white balance (refer to Endeavor above) for the light you use.
  4. Select A or Av Mode (can be called differently on different makes of DSLRs) to set the aperture fix to 16 or above. The camera will choose the proper shutter speed.
  5. Manual focus in macro mode. People complained on Amazon about the extension tubes that AF doesn't work properly. It can't. It's physics.
  6. Use your remote control to avoid additional vibration. Then you can easily use shutter speeds of for instance half a second. Be aware that the balance wheel won't have any spokes on the picture :huh:. But be assured: they are still there. I'd prefer powering down the movement beforehand so the balance wheel is not moving.
  7. On my zoom lens I had to fully zoom in (i.e. fully extended lens). Also my zoom lens follow gravity. Hard not to do it.
  8. Do some proper testing yourself. Experiment with different aperture values. Go to the extremes as I did to see the difference.

One last comment on the LED ring light: the downside is that you may see dotted lines on the circumference of screws. Look closely at the pictures of my movement above and see if you can spot them. If you have a room that is flooded with light it might work without. If you don't use it there might be just too little light to get a picture with a good contrast, i.e. the picture is whishy-washy and that is what you don't want to have if you re-assemble the movement and cannot see the details you were hoping for.

I will do some watch photography testing maybe next weekend and present the results here.

Cheers Alexander

Edited by AlexanderB
Added white balance
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Hi Bob and Alexander;

@Bob, thanks for your remark...... I would also thought it is a joint effort(?). @Alexander; you rock and I think we've got some interesting info in this thread and your summery is pretty spot on. As for the ISO, my camera (Nikon D700, full frame) never gets to seen anything else but full manual "M", a deliberate choice of course. I don't want the camera to "think", this prevents unwanted "surprises" dreamed up by Japanese camera engineers.

Last night I was thinking about covering a topic about objectives, which one is the best for macro photography; excluding special macro-objectives. This morning I did a little test and was surprised by the outcome.

Wide-angle objectives (objective with a focus length of 35mm or less) usually give a great depth of field, something desired by macro-photography. I happen to have a range of lenses between 14mm and 200mm. These are focus lengths with a Full-frame camera. If you were to screw these lenses to a smaller sensor, then these focal lengths changes by what is called a "crop-factor". Depending on the difference in size between a full-frame sensor and sensor you have, this could be a number of 1.6. So instead off a 14mm, the same objective becomes a 22mm. Not such a big deal you could say.....it depends where you after..... If you were to screw the 200mm objective in front of a smaller sensor, you suddenly get 320mm :thumbsu:

I started off with a 28-70 f2.8 zoom lens, just to be able to test the focus range.

First thing I discovered was that I had light-leaking through the extensions rings. Because the objective is a f2.8, it's big and heavy, putting a lot of strain on the extension rings.

Here you can see the problem;

light leaking 1.jpg

You can see the "haze". I corrected the problem with black tape around the seam between the objective and the extension ring.

Light leaking 2.jpg

Next was the 28 mm, but I can't show you any pictures because to focus sharp, the objective had to be "inside" the watch.

The closest I was able to focus sharp, with the objective nearly resting on the watch, was 35mm. So close to the object took all the light of course.

The first shot with f2.8 (full open and so the minimum depth of field)

35mm F2.8.jpg

The second shot is still 35mm, but f16, to gain a greater depth of field;

35mm F16.jpg

Curious about my discovery, I change objective to a 85mm f1.4mm. The objective had to be much further away to focus sharp, but unlike in "normal" photography, the depth of field was already very good at f1.4

85mm F1.4.jpg

It got even better when the aperture was decreased to f16.

85mm F16.jpg

Contrary to my initial thoughts, objectives with a longer focus length, including the extension rings, seem to work much better and you get much more space above the object to implement fancy lightning.

I would not have guessed this morning! Another lesson learned........ !

 

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Interesting Endeavor. I actually stumbled into it entirely by accident: added the bigger macro ring to my 18-135mm lens (w/ crop factor 1.6 28-216mm) and mounted everything including the ring light. Whooom the zoom went down following Newtons laws and ... the results were pretty well!

Cheers Alexander

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The old camera's, my very first, were notorious for light leaking bellows. Not directly the new camera's, but my one was already a "handed down generation to generation" :biggrin: Early lessons learned, one could say......

Perhaps I have to look into better extension rings. The setup this morning was an expensive camera, expensive objectives held together with gaffer-tape :D Oh well, as I said in the beginning, it's not the equipment and with gaffer-tape around the extension-ring seams I managed......that's all what matters ;) Gaffer-tape is the photographer best friend !

I could try my 70 - 200mm f2.8 zoom, but the result will be the same as in your pictures. The crop factor plays in advantage for people with a smaller sensor.

Maybe there is another topic to cover. There are also flash ring-light adapters, which can be used with a flash-light.

ring-01.jpg

I have no idea how good they are !? Of course, just like in "normal" photography, working with a lamp or a flash-light is a big difference. However, if you like to have a lamp, which puts out just as much LUX as a flash-light, you talk about big lamps with their associated heat/cost. So if you have enough ambient light to see what you are doing, working with a flash-light is certainly worthwhile looking into. As said in the thread "Greetings from Germany", I was once into "stobist"-photography (extremely interesting subject!) and I still have 4x TLL flash-lights laying around. It would be a waste not to use them, so I may look into one of those adapters......

Greetings: Roland.

Edited by Endeavor
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Hi Roland,

one thing I love about the LED ring light is that I can switch it on. And I use it not like a flash since it doesn't come with some TTL logic, i.e. the camera doesn't know about the light that comes on when I release the shutter. So just switch it on and have the light you need.

When using a flash you don't see the results directly. It's a bit more tricky to focus properly because while you focus you don't have sufficient light.

The LED ring light is powered by four AA batteries. If you leave the batteries in the case my LED light drains the battery. That's (and also because it's cheaper in the long run) I use eneloop rechargeable batteries.

Cheers Alexander 

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Correct Alexander! As I said, there is a big difference between working with a lamp or a flash-light. You highlighted the differences. That is not to say that flash should be discarded. Also with flash, I had TLL switched off, gives you a much better control. You want to be in charge, not the equipment ;) Of course, if you prefer it the other way around, "P" is also an option.....nothing wrong with that!

Not having any experiences with macro-photography, but I would assume that with a flash, because of the much higher light output, you can easily go up to f22 and still have a decent short shutter-speed........ Perhaps, because the distances are so close, and depending on how much "Oomph" you let your flash give, shutter speeds may still be 1/125 or even shorter(?)  Maybe, and now I'm pushing my luck here......perhaps "hand-held" macro-photography becomes in the realm of possibilities?? (saying not hampered by any knowledge :biggrin:)

Edited by Endeavor
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