From a photography perspective, there is simply no comparison between Dave Kessler's photos and Quinn's. Dave's win hands down. Dave has virtually no reflections/distractions in his pics, while Quinn's are nothing if not full of them.
Whose are perhaps even better than Dave's are Stephen Howard's. I spoke with Steve about how he did his for the Saxophone Manual, and was quite surprised at the simplicity of it--an old claw foot bath tub.
I have gone the light box route for the last number of years. For the most part that has reduced reflection "noise" on the shiny surface of the horns. What I really ought to do is re-photograph all of my horns that I did outdoors in 2008 (?) at our old place that are full of weirdly reflected distractions ranging from the maple tree to our back of our house.
That's the challenge photographing horns: their finish. Unlacqured saxes are not an issue, but the newer and shinier they are--and the bigger they are--the harder they are to get a really good photo of.
FWIW, I use Panasonic DSLR cameras (well, technically they're not DSLR because they're mirrorless, but let's not go down that rabbit hole
); a telephoto lens; and yes, a tripod. For the last number of years I have shot each image in multiple exposures--ranging from 3 to 7--(bracketing) and then combined them together using a separate HDR program. Then I finish each image off in Adobe Photoshop Elements. The next time I have to replace Elements, I will move away from it and switch to Lightroom with a my HDR plugin already included. This will save me a number of steps.
In case you're wondering what my saxophone images look like, they look like this...