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  #1  
Old 01-02-08, 11:47 AM
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Can members with more techi expertise advise on methods of taking good images of badges? Including suggestions on lighting, pixels, etc. Thanks.
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Old 02-02-08, 04:30 PM
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Bill... I'm not the greatest when it comes to photography but I've noticed that when I first read the camera directions and found the Macro setting and then used a small tripod for steadiness my quality really improved... another tip is to work with the lighting... sometimes an outdoor shot on a dull day with no flash gives great pics... am looking forward to any more tips from others...Jim
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Old 02-02-08, 05:31 PM
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Hi Bill, yes I would agree with Jim's comments. A tripod is essential, I have mine set up indoors in front of a window, and I use a piece of white cloth near the badge to diffuse/scatter the light (making it like jims dull day)
I set my camera to manual and do the F numbers and shutter speed by best guess, but I have taken so many photos now I get it right fist time (well most of the time) The problem with this is long shutter times normally 2,3 or 4 seconds, so I have to set the timer for each photo so the camera is motionless when the shutter opens for each picture.

here is one I took yesterday, in my dingy north england office, snowing outside, 4 second exposure, low F number probably 5.6. Yes this badge really is that coppery red colour

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Old 02-02-08, 06:29 PM
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Mr.Administrator,
How do we post full size images rather than thumbnails ?

P.B.
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Old 02-02-08, 06:43 PM
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Admin has a nice picture, tripod, difuser etc but I prefer to have the badge on a lightbox which means you have a white background and the image can be inserted into a text / book / article etc.
J
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Old 02-02-08, 06:50 PM
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Hi P.B, you can only do it if you have some web space somewhere and upload the image there first. If you can find a host that offers a free website or something then you could upload your images then inset them in the post by copying and pasting the image URL into the pop up prompt that appears when you click the "Insert Image" button, then you get the full size pic in all its glory rather than a thumbnail
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Old 02-02-08, 06:57 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by KLR View Post
Admin has a nice picture, tripod, difuser etc but I prefer to have the badge on a lightbox which means you have a white background and the image can be inserted into a text / book / article etc.
J
yes white is good but I don't have the gear, and they are only for here anyway (the internet) if I try a photo over white material it comes out pale blue, which I think is a problem with my low light indoors method. I can knock the background out with paintshop but its difficult to get right.
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Old 02-02-08, 07:16 PM
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There are many image hosts, but check out what you get. I have been using http://photobucket.com/. No problems or hassles to date.
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Old 02-02-08, 07:24 PM
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And here is the exact same image as above but with the background knocked out with Paintshop - its acceptable but could be improved with practice - I think you need a degree course to understand that program the manual is about 3 inches thick. Anyway it's only a few mouse clicks to do this - the difficult bit (or what needs practice ) is how the edge/boundry of the selected area is perceived by the program (the black bits in my photo)

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Old 02-02-08, 08:37 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill A View Post
There are many image hosts, but check out what you get. I have been using http://photobucket.com/. No problems or hassles to date.
and of course it doesn't take up any of our server space
which is rationed out by imposing limits on pic size so we get as many pics in as possible before we need more space. Last time I checked we (the whole forum pics and all) was under 100Mb not that big but we are certainly growing!! I think we have 4Gb of space so we are all still just in the broom cupboard of our 100 room country mansion.
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Old 02-02-08, 09:25 PM
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I scan mine one a Visioneer 4800 at 1200 mp which I bought on ebay for £12 + postage. They're scanned as bitmaps which I save as jpegs at a large a size as possible for my own files and then reduced own to the forums limits using a free download image editor called Irfanview. I could then put them on an image posting website such as photobucket or my own ISP - AOL Pictures for larger images but haven't got around to that yet. If anyone needs a larger pic of one of my postings they're always welcome to pm me.
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Old 02-02-08, 09:55 PM
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I scan mine one a Visioneer 4800 at 1200 mp
and often scanned images are as good as or better than with a camera. there are a few silver and gilt scans on the site somewhere which are excellent - better than with a camera - diffiult to get a good pic of S&G with a camera for some reason. I was planning on giving the scanner a go myself.
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