Photographing Firearms

I’m posting this in case it may be of interest to others. And at the outset I don’t claim to be a photographer. I have, however, learned one thing about photographing firearms that I’d like to share.

On occasion there’s a firearm I may be interested in but the photographs just don’t show the detail that I’d like to see. And sometimes it’s because the gun is photographed on a white or light background. It’s natural to think a light background will show up the dark gun better but just the opposite is so. The reason being the camera’s aperture adjusts to the light background and the darker details of the gun don’t show up.

See the examples of the photos I took under the exact same circumstance except for the different backgrounds.

Note that deep dark reds & blues also work well for backgrounds.

Notice in the cropped and enlarged photo of the receivers on the better photo the screws can be clearly seen to not be buggered and hard to tell on the other one.