Photography Tips?

Discussion of photography, editing and publishing techniques
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garsh
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Photography Tips?

Post by garsh »

Many of you here are not only great at building excellent custom models, you also tend to take incredibly sharp, well-lit photos, often in very creative and immersive angles.

My own experience in snapping photos of my LEGO creations has been a complete disappointment. My images are always way too blurry and often suffer from excessive flash reflection from the shiny plastic surfaces.

The camera I use is a Concord digital "Eye 2040". I'm sure it's not the best money can buy, so I've just about resolved to give up, assuming my camera just isn't capable of reasonably capturing such tiny subject matter.

Some of things I've tried to solve these problems are:
- setting the camera on a solid surface and using the timer
- using the digital zoom to take shots from far away (ugh)
- intense environment lighting with no flash

There are a couple modest LEGO creations of mine I'd like to document, and I have a few Mega Bloks models planned that I would love to be able to show to friends.

So what gives, is my camera cheap or am I just terrible at using it? Do any of you have advice that might get me snapping recognizable images?
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Drucifer
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Post by Drucifer »

This probably should have been posted down in publishing.

You seem to have tried some of the best tips I could offer. The best advice I can give is to use a tripod (just a small desktop one will work fine) and take pictures with your creation lit by bright daylight (an slightly cloudy, overcast day can be better than direct sunlight). If you don't mind could you post an image that you think is bad and then maybe we can examine it for problems.

Also I couldn't find too much information about you camera doing a quick search, but I see that it supports multiple image sizes. Are you taking pictures at the largest size/highest quality?

I hope this helps. :)
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Lord_Of_The_LEGO
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Re: Photography Tips?

Post by Lord_Of_The_LEGO »

garsh wrote:Some of things I've tried to solve these problems are:
- setting the camera on a solid surface and using the timer
- using the digital zoom to take shots from far away (ugh)
- intense environment lighting with no flash
I have both used # 1 & 3, and they work pretty, if not really, good for me.

The are three keys to photographing LEGO models that I find invaluable:

#1 Never use a flash ("Whites-out" some bricks and fades others)
#2 When possible, secure the camera, either on a tripod or by setting it on the table.
#3 Use the macro option if possible.

I hope this helps!
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garsh
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Post by garsh »

Drucifer wrote:This probably should have been posted down in publishing.
You're right, definitely. I never would have noticed "publishing" is about photography if you hadn't said so. :(
Drucifer wrote:If you don't mind could you post an image that you think is bad and then maybe we can examine it for problems.
Mind? Are you kidding? My pleasure. I appreciate any help on this I can get.

Hit these links to feel the misery of horrible LEGO photography:

http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y84/garsh/legoimg1.jpg
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y84/garsh/legoimg2.jpg

As you can see, I tried to get the same two objects twice. The image turned out very grainy, as is typical when I try this. I didn't bother setting up a solid surface to stabilize the camera, but take my word for it when I tell you it makes very little difference, if any. In these shots I used no flash and turned up my exposure all the way to take advantage of room lighting. To help with focus I took the shots from several feet away, as that seems to be how the camera works best.
Drucifer wrote:Are you taking pictures at the largest size/highest quality?
That's another thing I've tried, but I go back and forth trying various image sizes to find one that will hopefully work.

I did that for the shots above, by the way.
Lord_Of_The_LEGO wrote:Use the macro option if possible.
That's one option I haven't tried, but I don't think my camera has that, which is a shame. It sounds like exactly what I need.

By the way, Lord_Of_The_LEGO, that's some marvelous photoshopping you did on that avatar of yours. You managed to not only cleanly crop out the background, but you got a realy nice edge around the minifigure that lets him work on light or dark pages equally well.

Thanks for all the input, guys.
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Bruce N H
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Post by Bruce N H »

Hey,

Based on something Anthony suggested, I've been using a combination of lights--one incandescant and one fluorescant--and been pretty happy with the results. When I just used an incandescent light I got a real yellow tinge to the photos. Play around with the lighting angles to avoid reflections of bright spots back at the camera.

Backgrounds can be very important. If you just take a photo of your MOC on your desk with all of your stuff sitting behind it it can be distracting. Try for a solid background, in a color that will offset the MOC. A large sheet of paper draped so it curves (Lenny shows this here) works really well, because that helps avoid shadows and corners.

Editing your photos is important. Crop away extraneous space, use brightness/contrast tools to tweak the lighting, use the unsharp mask tool to sharpen the edges, size the image to something like 400 to 600 pixels on a side. You probably got some software with your camera, or something like graphic converter might have come installed on your computer. Commercial software like Photoshop can be great, but there is also free stuff out there like Gimp (see Kevin's article).

Play with distance on your camera. Too close and you might not get a sharp focus, too far and you might lose resoluton when you blow it up.

All-black MOCs are horrid to photograph because all of the details get muddled up. All-white MOCs are tough because it is hard to get the brightness/contrast right.

Take tons of photos and discard most of them. The advantage of a digital camera is that you don't have to pay for development. Sometimes I'll take 40 shots and pick the one best one to put on my website.

Anyway, hope those help.

Bruce
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Post by Drucifer »

garsh wrote:
Drucifer wrote: Are you taking pictures at the largest size/highest quality?
That's another thing I've tried, but I go back and forth trying various image sizes to find one that will hopefully work.
Ok. Something seems not quite right. Those two images you posted are 637x413 and 441x303. Web searching on your camera reveals that it should be able to do 1600x1200 (or 2 megapixels). Are you cropping out the center of an image? Or is that the size of the image straight out of the camera? Is there an SD memory card in the camera? It seems like your camera has some built in memory and can take pictures without a memory card, but there's not a lot of memory so they'll probably be low quality.

The images do look pretty grainy. Try lowering the exposure as the high exposure setting can cause the image to become grainy. Or better yet, just let the camera take the picture under fully "automagic" settings and see how it turns out. You can tweak from there.

Honestly I'm at a loss though. The camera should take better pictures than that. Here's a link to a review of the model one step up with pictures, so you should be able to get that quality with a smaller image.

Hope something I babbled helps you. :?
Bruce N H wrote: When I just used an incandescent light I got a real yellow tinge to the photos.
You should be able to get rid of that yellow tinge by adjusting the white balance on your camera/image for the incandescent lights.
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Post by Bruce N H »

Drucifer wrote:
Bruce N H wrote: When I just used an incandescent light I got a real yellow tinge to the photos.
You should be able to get rid of that yellow tinge by adjusting the white balance on your camera/image for the incandescent lights.
Hey,

Yeah, I know. What I've done that works pretty good is, in photoshop, go to the "adjust color balance" option and push the yellow/blue slider towards blue a bit, and maybe drop out the red levels a bit as well. The two light sources has the added benefit of reducing sharp shadows.

Bruce
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garsh
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Post by garsh »

Drucifer wrote:Are you cropping out the center of an image?
Yeah, especially since those were quickies I did on the spot just to post here. Like Bruce said, "If you just take a photo of your MOC on your desk with all of your stuff sitting behind it it can be distracting" so I crop. Alot!
Drucifer wrote:Is there an SD memory card in the camera?
For sure! The built-in memory isn't terrible, but you can only take a handful of shots at full size and quality without the SD card.
Drucifer wrote:...high exposure setting can cause the image to become grainy.
I had no idea, that could be key.

Thanks very much for that link, glancing at the page, it looks like it's full of detailed info, so hopefully I'll be able to pick something out. The model of camera described sounds like it has the same features as mine, plus an additional megapixel of resolution. The included user's manual that came with my model was very pedestrian, even to me.

The camera is pretty good for larger things from farther away. Even on low quality and low resolution I've had decent to good luck taking shots of myself and pets and so on.

For example, here's Mophead and Kiki on low res and medium quality, if I remember right:
http://i3.photobucket.com/albums/y84/ga ... tepets.jpg

Bruce, thanks for all that advice, you've clearly become quite involved with your photography skills. I pay close attention to backgrounds, and some of the things you mentioned are techniques I exploited to improve results when I used to use my flatbed scanner for getting close-up images of my minifigures and accessories.

Using something like a sheet of paper can make all the difference. At times I've used other things on hand like a jacket and in one case a sock! That's what I used to capture the Harg figure in my avatar, in fact. Using a simple background, I find, is not only good for reducing visual jumble, but for making an image that's easy to work with when editing for a specific use.

Speaking of editing, I don't have Photoshop, but I'm quite handy with Paint Shop Pro, so I'm all set for software. I've used both, and ended up liking the alternative better. Interesting parallel...

What does one do when one has a black MOC they want to capture? Build the same thing in grey and use it as an example?

Thanks again for your input, guys.
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