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The camera I use for photos is my Canon Rebel with a Macro lens attached.

When I take a picture I make sure that there is plenty of ambient light and that the flash is turned off as locks and keys are very reflective. In order to get a good picture when there is less than perfect lighting, I put the camera on a tripod and increase the exposure time.


For my videos I use a Canon s3 on a tripod.

I am right handed and hold my pick in my right hand. For my earlier videos the camera was pointing over my right shoulder. However my hand hid the plug from the camera so I moved the camera to my left side and I think I get better results.

Wow that's some nice photogear you've got there! All I have is a fugifilm finepix S6000fd, some cheapo tripods and a polarising/uv lens.

Here's my set up:

Camera: Panasonic SDR H40 P

Light: Ottlite Hobby/Craft Lite (Truecolor lamp)

Tripod: Giotto

I always shoot with the camera in front of me (facing downwards towards the keyway), on the tripod (fully extended) and zoom in from overhead for the close up shots. Light comes in from the side of the camera for best illumination of the keyway.

If the padlock is chrome, I try to diffuse the light by wrapping a white piece of paper or handkerchief around the light. Be quick - lest you burn everything down.

Locks good, Fire bad! got it

Nice cameras you guys have there... I reckon I've the oldest/cheapest camera here! It's a Sony DSC P-100 which I bought like 7-8 years ago. It produces very high quality macro photos although the memory is absolute rubbish (records 90 seconds of video). The tripod I use is a Jessops TP 220; here's a pic to save you from searching:



As for tips on photos, it really depends on the camera. I'm no expert on photography, but this is the kind of stuff I pay attention to and my pics always turn out pretty well... I adjust the brightness/contrast and colour balance aswell as the levels etc sometimes to neaten up the lighting and colours, but most of the time it's not necessary.

1. Don't use flash, because of reasons already mentioned.

2. Make sure the white balance is correct for the type of lighting.

3. If the light in the room isn't bright enough, you can reduce the shutter speed, make the aperture higher, or increase ISO. If the camera has an LCD display (which the majority do) you can see how it'll turn out and adjust everything until you get it right. If you're decreasing shutter speed though, make sure not to go too low as long exposures will make everything blurry unless the camera and subject are perfectly still. Also, be aware that higher ISO values will reduce picture quality as it will get more grainy the higher you set it.

4. Focus! I'm pretty sure 90% of cameras have a macro function; it can be turned on/off as and when it's needed. You'll see a little flower icon on the LCD which lets you know when it's on. Regular digicams like mine have automatic focus, and will focus on key points in the frame... this isn't always the best, but for taking picms of locks and related stuff it's great.

One problem some people run into is their video being out of focus because the darn auto focus doesn't want to focus on you lock instead it focuses out the window. The best way to avoid this problem is to have a background that is at a similar distance from the camera, either a table like I do or like Awol use your body as the background.

nice set-ups everyone!

I use a digital rebel, one of the older ones, it's only the 10mp version (Rebel XS) - I really need to get a macro lens for it though.

What macro do you have, .45cal?

bower 0.5x
www.bowerusa.com

Just bought the Canon 450D a few weeks ago so that will be my main method of making photos now, but for the video I use a Creative HD camera or a Sony handycam with DVD (not sure which type from head)

Here's a general tip for those people using Mobile Phone cameras:

http://www.diyphotography.net/super-mac ... a-dvd-lens

Using an old Optical drive lens (CD\DVD player) you can get some nifty up-close results.

Does anyone have any links to lock picking photography sites please ?. I keep running into this problem of time expired photographs on sites.

Maybe flickr? I don't think they expire images like photobucket does, and you can link directly to images, and even set your copyright license for the image. I don't know what their TOS is as far as lock related stuff is, but worth a shot definitely. it's kinda like youtube for still shots. Also, the signup is really quick if you have a yahoo account.

If you use photos from Flickr on a forum they want the image to link to the Flickr page. They don't want you just using the site to host images to use else where. They state it in their TOS. I didn't know it at the time I made my posts on how I make picks and how I anodize, I think thats why a lot of my images no longer show up. I still have a Flickr account for personal stuff, but I use Photobucket when I want to post pics on the forum.

Thanks for the input Ratyoke! I also noticed that they indeed to deactivate accounts after 90 days of inactivity. So I guess they are out. I was just an idea.

However, I think this really may be a moot point anyway as you can attach images directly to your posts. But everyone, please, please, resize your pics BEFORE uploading to help conserve drive space and bandwidth. Also resizing before uploading makes your posts look better and will make the site a more enjoyable experience for everyone.