Ruson-Hornsby Model H on e-bay

Hi Kim, I am getting a lot of dark pictures these days & wonder if my computer is sat wrong. Do you find these pictures very dark especially the first you see? Dave Croft

Like so many these are very dark. Sloppy work but easily solved by saving the pic and playing with it. ttfn Roland

I find them so dark as to be useless, I've always found a few ebay pics to be like that.

Cheers Tim

these days & wonder if my computer is sat wrong. Do you find these pictures very dark especially the first you see?

Loads of freebie simple photo editors around now, plus some very sophicated freebies. Try GIMP if you want 90% of Photoshop for free. I use Ashampoo Illuminator for quick'n'dirty viewing & tweaking, but I go back to Photoshop CS for heavyweight editing & creative stuff.

In this case, give the photographer a break! Been there too often -- no room to work, no light, too much contrast for digital cameras to handle, possibly limited range of focal lengths available.

At least (once you've tweaked) you can see it is what we expect, in nice, oily, order.

Lesson is that when u are selling, make sure u do you're tweaking before you upload (brightness, contrast, saturation, crop -- & then revisit brightness). May also have to tweak hue if in artificial light.

No amount of tweaking can find detail that was never registered, so don't under-expose, & do check your images as u take pix whilst u still have a chance to take more. Can make you a lot more money!

Finally, if you can can find a very solid post to lean on, you're often much better without flash, but be very still -- could be several second exposure in extreme cases. (Wind up the ASA rating on the camera if u can)

Much of above learnt whilst taking several hundred photos at Coolspring museum when I first had digital several years ago. Wish I'd known my own advice before I took them ... some painful lessons!

Colin

Thanks Colin, I had already set the pictures to perfect for my system using Photoshop 8 (having done 4 NS courses on it) I was just worrying that my own computers Gamma settings were different to everyone else's as so many pictures seemed far too dark. I will now stop worrying as so many agree that these are very dark. I suppose I could have asked if my own pictures at

-- Dave Croft Warrington

In message , Dave Croft writes

If you can get hold of Paintshop Pro V8 it is very simple to use the one step photo fix button to get almost anything perfect.

They were fine: even the air-cooled one which was obviously taken with it just dragged out from under a bench.

Brian L Dominic

Web Sites: Canals:

Hi Dave, This advice is useless to normal people, but I know you're a photo-geek, so it's something to consider.

There are devices that automatically set your system profile so you see accurate colors on your monitor. Do a web search on "pantone, optical, photocal and spyder." They run from about $150 to about $450. Considering the value of your currency, you should get the deluxe model... and a few engines to so you'll have something to photograph.

Anyway, it's a little sensor that you put on the front of your monitor. Then you run the software. Then you remove the sensor, put it in your desk drawer, and stop worrying. It's all taken care of.

I got the mid-range model. Was it worth it? Probably not. But now I feel good knowing the colors on the monitor are accurate.

Rob

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= Rob Skinner La Habra, California

Interesting looking at the bidding on this - looks like a real auction instead of the usual e-bay wham, bang, thank you ma'am.

Regards,

Kim Siddorn

But it's not finished yet!

Cheers Tim