I’ve been working on some ‘glamor shots’ of my pistols. Literally my setup is a Nikon D5000, an SB-800 flash, a desk lamp and some printer paper. With a bit of Photoshop, I've gone from this
To this (click to embiggenate)
My poor Dan Wesson is starting to show its age. Bluing is starting to fade, the endless nicks and scratches from 17 years of handling it, but still it’s a fine shooting firearm.
Basically, I shoved a gum eraser behind the firearm to raise it up just a bit and let some light in behind it. I set the flash to overexpose by a full stop and aimed it toward the ceiling. The lamp is basically the same color as the flash, so it helps get some light in being that f16 needed that little push..
I then took the image into Photoshop where I set the levels so that the white paper was pure white, and edited out the desk around the edges. Because the ceiling acted as the illumination source, it was even enough that the paper didn’t exhibit falloff and the white was easy to add in. A little sharpening and some cloning to remove a few spots of dust that worked their way into the photo and viola!
I don’t think Oleg has anything to worry about, but I’m still proud of my pictures