Digital Photography

It was a decent bit of reading, particularly for those just starting into digital. Post it, Martin.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

Yes please Martin

The BIG advantage for me on going digital was the reduction in size and weight - my digital equivalent of 6kg of 35mm equipment weighs in at just over 0.5kg in a package 20% the volume. The camera is only 2 megapixels, yet can turn out a 10 x 8 print with superb fine detail.

I used to e sceptical, but now I'm converted.

J

In message , Campingstoveman writes

Good grief how many photos do you take?

20,000,000,000 / 600,000 is more than 33,000!

Digital photography is good for ease of use on a computer but for use like normal photograph it can get expensive. Good quality photopaper isn't cheap neither are colour ink cartridges for a decent quality photoprinter.

The other snag is that the electronic sensors or the digitising process cannot handle the same contrast ratio as totaly film based system. Getting good digital images under conditions that film wouldn't bat an eyelid at can be tricky. With film you have quite a lot of latitude after exposure. With digits if the image isn't there because it's above peak white or below black no amount of post processing will recover an image.

The idea of Digital Photography to me is not to print onto paper unless I enter a competition and that is required. I maybe fortunate that I have a laptop and a DVD player but if I wish to show friends they can see them through my television,or the above. Club nights if I am presenting a piece then I have occasional access to a Video projector. As to size of hard drive as CCD's get better the size of a photo will rise hence more space required and as to number of photo's taken, visiting a steam rally in one day means I will take in excess of 200+ photo's. When I go to Dorset I will take my card reader and Laptop to store all my pics.

99% of people I show my photographs too wouldn't spot the difference of quality over film even if shown it.

Martin P

A most interesting thread. I find digital especially useful for capturing documents but my results are very variable. My best results seem to be using a tripod set over the paper. on a dull background and with natural light falling obliquely across the paper. What say you? regards Roland

I do have my occassional good ideas then :-))

Never tried photographing documents as such but you seem to have it covered, I use a monopod to support the camera as it is easier to use unless you let it go of course.

Have you tried say a 100watt lamp close by as natural light can change by the second.

Martin P

Do you do a lot of document photography? I haven't done any at all since we got the scanners, and must admit that the old light tent we used has probably gone in the bin!

Take a white sheet and make a five-sided box with it over a frame of bamboo or whatever. Light from four sides and on top with dichroic lights through white tracing paper.

About as shadowless as you can get, but as you intimate, it can be awkward getting the lighting correct.

DWE used to admit to having terrible trouble with getting decent black and white prints on a clear summer's day...

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

You really need a camera that you can put into complete manual mode, not only exposure/aperture but also effective speed and, probably the most important, white balance.

If you can't fix the white balance the camera will try to make the "brightest" part of the image "white". End result is that every image will have a different colour cast, even with the same controlled lighting and exposure settings.

Documents will generally be on white paper this will confuse any auto-exposure and it will under expose by a variable amount.

Ideally soft even lighting, see post about light tent, and manual everything. White balance set on something white and exposure either by trial and error (don't trust the LCD viewfinder) or an 18% gray card and compensate the readings you get.

Not quite the same has handing round a buch of prints, everyone has different tastes. One person one might find a given picture boring and just pass over it, another person will be fascinated by the same picture and want to look closely at it for a long time. Can't do that with the communal aspect of a single TV.

HDs are getting cheaper and bigger by the day... 120Gig is not uncommon.

Still over 165 days of rallies on that, small by todays standards,

20Gig HD... Though some means of back up is required, you don't really want all your eggs in one basket.

The one thing I've found my digi camera invaluable for is recording how things go together: when we went to Prague earlier this year we bought a crystal chandelier. I didn't realise how we got it home until they took it off display and started to dismantle it! I whipped the camera out and the shots I took made reassembly an absolute doddle.

I'm sure the same would apply to an engine!

Brian L Dominic

Web Sites: Canals:

of the Cromford Canal: Light Railway:

Yep done that and another use is taking shots of things in shops to show SWMBO'd what is available (light fittings, shelving) she has also done the same for me (beds). Don't rely on the colour rendition though.

Thanks Dave. I do get exactly what you describe and will experiment as you suggest. regards Roland

Both of the later pair of Sony Mavica cameras we bought have a video output socket for direct connection to a TV or a USB port for PC monitor connection. Only partially useful if you already have a monitor, but still handy.

The 'pixels race' doesn't mean necessarily 'better' pictures, rather that the pictures you get could be better if they could be viewed at full resolution. We have received a lot of stick over the years for putting up pictures at higher than basic 640 X 480 resolution (VGA) on our website, but now with better modems and broadband there is no problem, and most folks accept that it's worth the wait for a decent picture.

I think we get 1280 X 1024 off the lower res cameras and 1600 X 1200 off the other one. File sizes are 200K for the smaller and 512K for the larger, mainly as Sony didn't use such high compression on the later cameras as they had Memory Stick capability as well as the floppy disk drive, so storage became a non-issue.

We have stocked up with Memory Sticks on our trips to the USA, and have 7 in total which we split between the cameras. The later 256mb sticks are very useful indeed and can take almost a full day's shooting unless you are really going mad! We haven't used the floppy drives in any of the cameras, but it's there if we need it.

We also take our laptop when we go to Portland, as we shoot 400+ images and can have a quick editing/download session back at the motel each night, with a reshoot of any that didn't come out well the next day.

A good site for anyone wanting to look at specifications etc is:

We found this very good indeed, especially as they keep the reviews of older models on there.

Peter

-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info:

Gentlemen, It would be of interest to me who is actually on Broadband now and who is using a Digital Camera. By the way I am pleased how both this and the Video posting are panning out :-)) Martin P

On Sun, 8 Aug 2004 12:34:45 +0100, "Campingstoveman" put their pint down, sat back and

Yes to both!

Brian L Dominic

Web Sites: Canals:

of the Cromford Canal: Light Railway:

Yes to both, except that BB network work means I'm back to slow old ISDN. B-(

For website use I use a basic image size of of 320x240 compressed down to 20k bytes or so. Viewing a site even at 64kbps ISDN, let alone at lower analogue dialup rates that has "large" images is a pain. BB is catching on but I think dialup still needs to be thought about for a good few years yet.

Martin, yes to digital but no to Broadband (26.4k dialup :-( at home, ISDN at work).

Regards, Arthur G

I'm on Telewest Broadband - have been for about 18 months - and have found it seamless and generally fault free. The e-mail facility falls over now and again, but otherwise .......

Regards,

Kim Siddorn,