I had the idea of making some sort of tutorial to show you how to easily take better photos of your walkmans, and finally I could finish it today.

I published it in my website, and I invite you to see it, and try it. If you do, you can go from this:

to this:

and without tricks: both are made without special equipment: no tripod, no expensive D-SLR, no expensive lenses, no studio backgrounds... just available light and a simple, cheap digital camera.

Check it at www.walkman-archive.com -> Articles.

hope you like it.

I take all my photos using just the camera from my mobile phone

Superb post.  Great site too.  Do you think you could do us a quick bullet pointed list of 8-12 best practices e.g. lighting, exposure/shutter speed, using natural light over flash, background, managing reflective surfaces & maybe some brief pointers on image manipulation for the few who have access to such facilities and I'll put this post in the 'Featured posts' list so everyone can see it.  I really want to take the time to photograph mine properly but have yet to get the superb results I want to make it worth while.

Thanks Agentorange,

Yes, I could do, but not today. I put it in my wishlist ;-)

I usually have a few free time, but I enjoy writing articles, building my website and taking photos of my gadgets. I prefer to do it bit by bit, slowly but thoroughly than make it quick but not polished...

So I think I can make such article, but I'm not sure when... be patience and it'll arrive ;-)

I saw some of your flickr photos: you have some very nice, specially those taken outside home, in some sort of wood table with difusse light and small depth of field.

BTW, check you PM.

When in doubt of holding your camera steady after you

have cropped and focused you shot of whatever - ...

USE a Tripod and set the timer to take the picture with! &

Works terrific every time

I have Four Tripod's of various size's and capabilities!

hurodal, great post. I've always had difficulty taken adavntage of my camera's settings and light orientation. Your site is a testament to your photography skills.

Any (simple and cheap) tips wold be most appreciated.

What I have done in the past, and has quite good luck with IMHO, is using a semi- translucent table outside. I find that with this setup I don't suffer bleed over of the background colour onto the subject. For example shooting a silver walkman will just echo it's surrounding colours. I've also had minimal success with both white and black (matte) backgrounds.

Here's an examples of my blue WM-101 outside semi-shaded, using a DSLR on my glass table. I feel that this setup really allowed the aqua blue to expose correctly..

Hello Brutus (and sorry for my delay)

These are nice photos of a very beautiful walkman. And it has a dificult colour to reproduce. That's because on of the weakness of many monitors in terms of colour reproduction is that color. Even the better ones (I mean: pro monitors, have it). Cyan is one of the colours that man managed to get a very strong one in pigment but still not in screens.

The glass table you're using is causing almost no reflection back to the walkman, it's clearly seen, but I believe you can achieve good results with white/black background too. IMHO, the transparent background leaves the impression the walkman itself is floating in the air but I believe it has no effect on color reproduction.

The only problem with white/black backgrounds is that they can cause over/underexposure, but that's easy to manage. And it's even easier if you use RAW (I don't know if you already use it, as you removed metadata).

Can you tell me in few lines, how do you adjust exposure the scene? which procedure do you follow? 

Also, can you post a photo on which can be seen that bleed you're talking about?

I think I can prepare some tricks for the following, that needs different techniques:

- walkmans with metal housing

- walkmans with brushed metal housing

- walkmans of strong colour (like red, yellow...)

what do you think?

No apologies needed hurodal, indeed I'm looking for some advice when shooting pics.

In resposnse to some of your questions, I'll have to draw upon memory here. These pics were taken about 9 months ago outside, semi conceled by an awning. I tried with and without flash but the flash seemed to "bleach out" some of the cyan.

I then proceed to take some braketing shots (forgot the settings now) to sample exposures. I did fail to take them in RAW that might explain the noise and crappy overall feel of the pics. I chose (what I thought were) the best exposures and posted them.

I tried using a 18-55mm on Macro and then a 75-200mm lens from a distance of about 2 meters zoomed in.

I will retry your method of using the white/ black background outside again soon and post some pics...but I was wondering after reading that, would a grey matte background be better? Reghardless I will try an recreate the bleed out effect I mentioned earlier.

Thanks again hurodal, I love photography (just getting in to it...slowly) and walkmans/ boomboxes are very patient subjects to shoot!

Found some pics from the same day, taken without cover of the awning (see the tree refections) but note the Technics CD player's colour where the open button is. That entire unit is a beautiful jet black, but seems a dark grey when photographed in the sunlight. The Sony has the same colouration.

Inside or under the awning I can get that black to really show it's "true colour"

Advice?

Hi,

I've just added a new tutorial to my website, explaining how to manage lighting with rugged metal walkmans, especially based on what you (agent orange and brutus) told me. Hope you find it useful.

Next to this I'll add a tutorial based on brushed metal body walkmans (more difficul) and then, I can add a glossy or high gloss body, which are the most difficult.

enjoy it.