Re: Advices on taking photographs of calculators
Message #5 Posted by Frank Boehm on 18 Apr 2006, 6:18 p.m.,
in response to message #4 by Valentin Albillo
I need to add some points :)
> Digital camera (in my case an old Sony model, 3 Mpixels or so), the more pixels the better.
absolutely true; even if pictures are compacted to VGA size, you will notice the difference. Don't get fooled by "super 99 megapixel software resolution" - optical resolution comes with a price, nice allround cameras are available for 750$; DSLRs with good glasses are a couple of k
> Use some suitable cloth or otherwise for backgrounds, preferably dark-toned so that your calculators will stand out the most. Avoid white or very clear backgrounds, since metallic bezels will tend to blend with the background and not stand up as they sould.
yes, but not suitable for all types of pictures; best is to have one light and one dark background handy
> Use a macro setting or else zoom to the maximum possible size so that your calculator fills at least 3/4 of the picture area.
this depends on the optics - it's probably better to have less picture area filled than shooting with a strong distortion (mostly around the longest and shortest focal length)
> Use both as strong an ambient illumination as possible *AND* fill-in flash, taking good care of angles so that there are neither reflections nor shadows (which the fill-in flash will fill IN, of course).
ambient light is nice - you will notice, when you are shooting with sunlight... It's possible to simulate ambient light by attacking diffusors to your indirect flash. I recently acquired a ring flash (intended for macro shootings), this creates very "hard" and "technical" looking pictures, even when not in macro distance. This will of course only work for technical objects, you wouldn't want to do portraits with it :)
> F-stop to the maximum possible f-number to increase depth-of-field, very important for relatively small objects such as calculators captured at macro settings. Otherwise you risk having some parts of your calculator perfectly in focus and others slightly unfocused or at the very least not that sharp. Don't worry for the reduced amount of light reaching the sensor, as the fill-in flash will compensate.
yes - but no. Even high-priced chunks of glass will go very "soft" when shooting at maximum F. You will certainly have to experiment to find the acceptable range. Most certainly this is some stops further down.
> Set the ISO setting not to Auto but to the lowest possible number (usually ISO 25), because this will reduce electronic "noise" (spurious colored pixels here and there), most specially in dark areas of the image and, again, the fill-in flash will compensate for this.
lowest is good (though it's probably ISO100 or 200 on your camera)
> And last but certainly not least, a tripod and a cable trigger are ABSOLUTELY essential, such that the camera is absolutely steady and no unnecessary vibrations are transmitted to it while triggering the shutter. Don't even think of taking pics without the tripod, the sharpness will decrease an order of magnitude or two. If you don't have a cable trigger for your camera, simply set it to autotrigger, so that it fires by itself after a short countdown. This way no vibrations are transmitted from your finger to the camera's body.
and remember to get a *good* tripod; I started out with a very clumsy one which could hardly handle my DSLR. I replaced it by a (only one third as expensive) "pro" tripod for video shooting - from ebay. If available, I'd suggest buying an IR remote - that's far better than those short wires...
btw.: if you own an old scanner, you might want to try that one; I had a Relysis scanner, that scanned 1 cm deep - good enough for most of the calculators.
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