On Thu, July 23, 2009 10:05, Elson T. Elizaga wrote: > I have a project involving the photography of handmade greeting cards. I > put each card on the floor and shoot with the camera lens 90 degrees to > the floor, so that the sensor is parallel to the card. I have an > umbrella with a wireless flash on it for light. I know of two basic approaches to keeping the tripod legs out of the way. One is to put your head on the bottom of the column instead of the top (if your tripod supports this). This may or may not actually help, depending on the geometry. You've still got three legs surrounding your subject, so making sure the light casts no shadows can get interesting. However, it makes it easier to keep the legs out of the actual photo, at least. The second is to use either a studio stand instead of the tripod, or else some kind of boom arm on the tripod to hold the camera off to the side instead of right in the middle of the legs. It might be easier to change other things instead; possibly setting the card on a 30-degree slanted background (so gravity still holds it shut, and there should be enough friction that it doesn't slide down) and pointing the camera at that, which is now off to the side and down instead of straight down. This will fix both the lighting and the visible leg issues. Aligning the camera perfectly will be a little harder (a mirror plus a mirror with a hole make up a really easy alignment tool for this kind of situation). -- David Dyer-Bennet, dd-b@xxxxxxxx; http://dd-b.net/ Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/ Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/ Dragaera: http://dragaera.info
