I don't claim to know what I'm doing. I just know what works for me. Knives are my hobby not photography and I will never get to the stage of buying a professional camera. I went to buy a new compact travel camera and my wife suggested we get a replacement for our old EOS-300 DSLR at the same time. I even down graded the DSLR requirement to a compact mirrorless DSLR, because if it is going to be used, it has to fit in my travel bag or hunting pack.

I have found that my better photos are taken around midday on very cloudy, even stormy days. So obviously intense light is not required. By using a tripod and long exposures (3-6 seconds) I don't need much light, just even light. Reflecting the light off two corners of the room gives me light from 6 direction. Then with up to 4 adjustable reflector panels around the knife I can minimise the shadows.

Shooting tethered to my IPad has been a great advantage to me. My short range vision is getting really bad so moving from the little 2" LCD on the camera to a 9" IPad means I can be more accurate checking that the focusing is on the knife and not the background.

My new point and shoot has this facility also, so I might go back to using the simpler camera, after all we are only taking pictures for the internet not the front page of a glossy magazine.