Southwestern Style Birch HF

Steve, this one looks great as well. I like to loosely base my turnings on other forms as well. Gets you some great ideas, but still makes it your own. Well done.

Steve, Steve, Steve! You're getting to be a HF turning machine!

I like the form on this one. That flat top and deep shoulder is a booger to reach up under, huh?

You need a photo tent and backdrop, man! This deserves a classy pic.

Thanks for the kind words. Been thinking - a lot - about a photo tent setup. Racking my brain about how to do the frugal, etc. Will have to come up with something as I ended up taking about 35 photos before I decided that I could 'live' with these. Gots to be something I can do that will give me better photos - the turnings just don't come across the same as when you are looking at them in person. I am sure you guys have all already been through it and understand what I am saying. Will make the effort and improve photo quality - thanks!

Steve it is a beauty. I like it a lot the form and finish. Well done.

Steve, very well done, it looks like you turn more and more into a hollow form affair, which is very good of course. Keep em going.

You nailed this one!

Steve, as a resident of the great Southwest and the owner of several pieces of Native American pottery, I can tell you that this piece would fit right in with all the pottery I've seen. It has the right form and that wood just sings. Nice work!!!

Nancy (32 days)

Good stuff, Steve! Nice work!

Very pretty piece, Steve. And although the pics aren't bad, I agree with Neal and you about the need for a better photo setup...your work deserves it.

I use my photo rig on virtually every piece I turn. If you're wrestling with the cost for the photo tent setup, think about how little it will cost per turning.

Vaughn - it's not so much the cost of a photo setup - it's trying to figure out exactly what I need (claiming ignorance). I did a number of photos this morning trying to duplicate your advice - used the 2 second timer, a tripod but found the smallest F stop my camera goes to is F8. I am using a Canon A70 - anyway, lots of the photos were out of focus. Tried playing with the background but realized (after an hour) that I need a backdrop. Am in process of checking on-line and plan on getting something in-place ASAP. Thanks for the push - from both you and Neal!

Steve Schlumpf said:

I did a number of photos this morning trying to duplicate your advice - used the 2 second timer, a tripod but found the smallest F stop my camera goes to is F8. I am using a Canon A70 - anyway, lots of the photos were out of focus.

Click to expand...

Vaughn's camera must be an SLR-style digital to have that high of an f-stop number available. Our smaller-format cameras match up with their bigger brothers when it comes to shutter speeds (how many ways are there to measure time?) but the f-stop values for exposure are entirely different. My Canon A540 only goes up to 8.0 as well, and that's normal. In fact, the word is that it's hard to get an out of focus picture on a digital camera when you really want to (fuzzy backgrounds for portraits or other telephoto shots, etc).

I can't tell how far your camera was from the HF when you took the pics, but it could have been "on the borderline" between the normal and macro ranges. Here are the different focusing ranges according to the chart near the bottom of [THIS PAGE] from the [Steve's Digicams] review site:
If you're not familiar with the Macro mode, you normally enter it by pressing the "flower" button on the back of the camera. A matching flower will appear in the LCD screen (image from [Review Page 3] on Steve's DigiCams):



The caption for the image right above that one talks about the manual focus feature (with onscreen distance gauge!) that you might to check into as well.

Unfortunately, using the Macro Mode on an object this deep will usually cause some foreshortening (a bulge-y look) and you will be hard-pressed to get the whole object in focus. The trick here is to switch back out of Macro mode, move the tripod back and zoom IN. That will tend to flatten the image a little more, but hopefully your lighting setup will "give bacK" some of the depth you lose.

That's a beautiful piece, Steve. Great form, wonderful finish and interesting wood. You truly did it justice.