<p>Edgar bought a blem Anderson AR-15 lower receiver last month, so yesterday we built it up and mated it to this <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://www.bravocompanyusa.com/">BCM</a> upper I've had laying around for about a year (or maybe the upper is <a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="http://palmettostatearmory.com/">PSA</a>, I forget which).
</p><p><b>Quick and dirty rifle photo technique:</b>
</p><p>I have an old Olympus digital camera at the office, maybe ten years old, set up on a tripod. I put the rifle on a table in the warehouse with a (dirty) white top where the light is best, then set up the camera with the tripod. I set it to aperture priority, and close the lens down as far as it will go (in this case, <i>f</i> 8), so even with low light I get crisp focus. You need the tripod because without flash it will be a long exposure.
</p><p>Then in Photoshop I use the white eyedropper in the Curves dialogue to white out the background. This cleans it up nicely, but also washes the entire image out a bit and you sometimes lose a lot of detail.  Then I clean up all the marks and scratches on the table, and use Auto Levels to get the contrast and everything right.
</p><p>It sounds complicated, but it's actually quick and easy.
</p><p>Occasionally, if I am in a particular hurry, instead of relying on Curves to white out the background, I used the Magic Wand to select the background and delete it to white. That's why you can sometimes see the edges of the shadows so distinctly. It's actually a pretty poor practice and rarely gives a good result.
</p><p>So remember these simple steps:
</p><p>1. Aperture priority;
2. Lens closed down as much as possible (<i>f</i> 8 in my case, but many cameras can go all the way down to <i>f</i> 22);
3. Tripod and timer;
4. Enlarge canvas so you have room to rotate if necessary and improve the crop;
5. White dropper in Curves dialogue;
6. Use the Selector to erase marks and scratches on the background and also to clean up background;
7. Auto Levels;
</p>
8. Crop.
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/people/26209464@N00">Mitch Barrie</a> from Reno, NV, USA
CC BY-SA 2.0
<a rel="nofollow" class="external text" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/simonov/30656321862/">Edgar's first AR-15</a>