Ok, I found ‘em. I’ll just cut and paste the text from that thread here:
1.
Use a tripod. It is very hard to hold a camera perfectly still. And blurry shots are usually worse when indoors for a couple reasons. First, the lighting isn’t as bright as outdoors, so there’s a longer exposure time that you have to hold the camera still. The slightest movement will blur the pic. You might notice the first couple pics look a little blurry compared to the 3rd pic, that’s why. Secondly, when you’re taking closeups, there’s more fine detail that will blur from slight movement because you’re so close. It’s more noticeable when you look at the closeup pic because everything is right in your face blown up.
2.
Get better lighting. You need some full spectrum lights for indoor photography. Notice how that last pic is yellow looking? That’s why, because of the “regular” indoor lighting. When a camera meters the shot for light indoors, and it thinks it’s bright enough that it doesn’t trigger the flash, your pics come out yellow like that. You need full spectrum so it’s more like outdoor light. Florescent full spectrums are best because they’re cheaper to operate, and they won’t make you get hot under the lights like regular light bulbs. What I did was go to Walmart and buy a couple clamp lights from the hardware section. Then I bought some full spectrum florescents. I can clamp the lights to whatever is handy (a table, bucket, trashcan) for the proper height. You can adjust the lighting how you want it, and there’s no need for a flash because the lights are bright enough, but it’s like outdoor light from the sun so it looks more natural. If the lights are too bright, you can move them away more, or build a softening box.
3.
Choose a background that complements the item being photographed. You don’t want a distracting background. You want peoples attention on the item you’re photographing. For instance, in the third pic on the left side, where the red background ends and you can see all the stuff in the background, it’s distracting to the eye and takes the focus off the knife. The second and first pics aren’t so bad, but really you want your background to be all even with nothing extra showing in the background behind the background. (That sounds kinda confusing, but I think you get what I mean)
Also it makes for an interesting background if you can find something with an interesting texture and/or color. It looks more interesting than having a plain flat one color background like a sheet of posterboard. It looks better for closeup shots. For instance, in a lot of Ted’s knife photos you’ll notice he uses a fine textured mat natural fiber mat. (I dunno what they’re called) It looks similar to those bamboo or whatever they are mats that they use on the Cold Steel video rolled up for sword chopping tests. If I’m taking pics of a “tactical” style knife, I might use a piece of camo cloth for the background (woodland, night vision, OD, whatever) because it would complement the style of knife that it is.
Well, I think that’s a few good tips to help your indoor pics improve a bit. That’s about all I can think of right now. Also, check the below link. There you can find how to build a soft box, and find a bunch more tips specifically about taking indoor knife photos from the links. I hope this helps you some, it took me quite a bit to type it all. <img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" />
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