Photography is another of my many hobbies. I'm not qualified to really teach anyone, especially as my equipment, software and such would likely be non-mainstream and cost more than I get a sense that some would like to spend here. That said, I'll share a technique I use when taking pictures of smaller things.
The picture at left is the smaller mortise chisel I just completed.
This picture is untouched and just as it came from the camera, a Sony A580, It was shot against a piece of gray paper I got from Michael's suspended on a holder I made. More on that setup later.
Lighting was nothing more than a fluorescent desk lamp with a daylight bulb and a floor lamp with a 3-way incandescent bulb. The incandescent bulb is why you see the shading to more of a beige near the bottom on the background and was intentional.
The next picture, to the right is the same picture after
I spent a little time in my digital darkroom, Paint Shop Pro X6.
A lot of people use Adobe Photoshop or Elements, also good software. I use Paint Shop Pro because it was the lesser cost package when I first started using it many years ago and I don't want to learn another package just to be mainstream. The learning curve on all these packages can be daunting - like Sketchup.
Anyway, all I did to the picture was adjust the color and apply a depth of field tool to blur out the background, isolating the tool in the picture.
Really, just two relatively simple adjustments to the original picture.
To the left is the setup I used. Nothing fancy at all. The frame that holds the paper is knocked together from 1x2 pine. The paper is held on the frame with a couple of spring clips.
You can see the floor lamp in the upper right corner and the desk lamp in front. All the pictures here were shot from the same point, hand held, sitting in my desk chair, no tripod. I used the telephoto zoom to get close to avoid wide angle lens distortion. Then zoomed back for the shot of the setup.
This same setup can be scaled up. A larger frame, larger paper or cloth background, bigger lights, and you can get pictures of larger items.
I have larger lights for portrait work but they'd be overkill for small things like this.
Construction paper in different colors is dirt cheap and good for providing contrast.
Hope this is helpful and shows you can get decent pictures without a ton of special equipment.
