Photographing Welder

Welding materials produce a very high source of light which harm the welder eyes.

In order to protect welder eyes, a very dark and protective helmet with a special dark glass in it must be worn. It is impossible weld without this device because the light is so intensive.

Just to have an idea, even people near by welders should not look at the welding point to void eyes damage and possible blindness.

After seem photos of welders doing this job, I was wondering in how to photograph people working in the welding field. Not only that but there is a need of focusing, aperture, shutter speed, and ISO sensitivity.

As I have friends that work in this field, I thought to photograph them while working and give the photo to them as gift but I do not know how to do this kind of photo.

On Google images has a lot of photos of people welding but not tips in how to photograph.

As I never saw any article about how photograph welders, I decided to ask anyone in how to perform properly this task.

Thanks.

Nivaldo

Tags: Welders, Welding

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Permalink Reply by nathan mccreery on November 8, 2011 at 11:32am

I've done that, but it's been a long time. It seems that the actual arc will just blow out with no detail recorded. It will probably end up being a situation where you have to make an educated guess and live with the result. It may be possible to use some derivation of HDR to get better results, however, remember that your eye will naturally expect the arc to be completely blown out so that would not necessarily be an undesirable, or unexpected result.

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Permalink Reply by CameraClicker on November 8, 2011 at 7:46pm

Arc welding is just using lightning on a small scale. It is just as bright and there is not much detail to be had in what is essentially a continuous spark. Looking at it through the viewfinder of a dSLR is probably not good for your eyes. This is one of those rare times when a camera with an electronic viewfinder is better. You can look at the picture of the arc without worrying about damaging your eyes.

Unless you have very powerful studio strobes, just expose for the rest of the scene and let the arc blow out. If you shoot raw, you can pull the exposure down 4 stops but I think even at that it will be blown out.

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Permalink Reply by Nivaldo on November 11, 2011 at 10:09am

I have seem photos of welders where not only the welding itself but also the welder clothes, helmet and parts been welded photographed very nice and with all colors nicely detailed. I believed that a good flash should be used to get the details behind of the welding point well illuminated to get details of colors. Almost the same than using fill flash in other photography. When I have some chance to do this test, I will place my camera in a tripod, preset manual focus , aperture, shut speed, and ISO. Then I will ask a friend to weld something else positioning himself at 90 degree in relation with my camera lens. After this test done I will post on this site the photo and the details in how I got it done. I will do few different shots and choose the best one.

Thanks for your suggestion.