Lousy Photographs

[Tucson Thump]

I understand that some people are upset because the color of their guitar can appear different in the seller photos than what they receive. The reason is that while "digital" has made photography easier it hasn't made it necessarily uniformly better .... that has to do with the person taking the photo. For example, I'm amazed at the variety of colors that Orion Green appears to be when comparing Silver Sky models on Reverb. Some vendors / sellers shoot their photos under any kind of light and just post it while some take a great deal of care.

The problem is that the color of a guitar photographed under tungsten, florescent, l.e.d, daylight in the shade, daylight cloudy, daylight direct and by flash are all going to look somewhat different. Dyes don't reflect their color consistently under various light sources also. Add to that the problem that when shooting jpegs the in-camera processing may add saturation or change the contrast and that computer monitors / tablet screens / phone screens all have different icc color profiles and what you see may not be what you get.

As an aside, I have had the opportunity to buy some wonderful guitars at great prices because the supplied photos were crap and the guitar appeared too over/under exposed or so off color that no one else showed interest. If you are a seller, do yourself a favor and learn how to use a neutral grey or white card in one of your photos as well as how to use the processing presets in your camera or phone.

 

[Deleted member 5962]

I know what you're saying. I'm not a prefessional photographer, but I hardly post any pics of my prettiest guitar because none of the pics are good. My 25th Ann. C22 Semi Hollow LTD has a 10 top that is Sapphire blue smokeburst. It's a dark blue, that fades into black paint on the sides. It is a VERY tight flame job and VERY pretty in any light. But it's a darker color, so getting a picture that shows just how pretty it really is would require doing so outside in sunlight, and I have not done that. Every pic I have of that guitar doesn't look anywhere near as good as the actual guitar does. The photos DO NOT do it justice at all.

That said, we've all seen some "glamour shots" of guitars, where the photographer was so good they made the pics look better than the real guitar ever did.

 

[jak3af3r]

My C24 in Angry Larry always loses the purples and comes out red in pictures.

I also built a tele and used huge bass-boat purple flake and every camera turned that one royal blue. It made for a wild experience on stage with video screens where you see the purple on stage and on the screen is blue.