I'll be running a few demo games over the course of the next few months and
one of the stipulations is that I take photos of the games.
No biggy...so I need a digital camera which is better than the PoS that I
presently have which is fine and dandy for "regular" pics but really stinks on
close ups.
So my question to your listers with digitals: I need a DC which is capable of
taking close ups but doesn't cost and arm and a leg. Suggestions?
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 01:03:07PM +0000, damosan@comcast.net wrote:
> So my question to your listers with digitals: I need a DC which is
Suggestions?
I'm not up on specific models, but I would look for decent low-light
performance. You really don't want to use a flash, as it'll wash out any
surface detail on the minis, so you'll want a tripod as well.
R
The Fujifilm FinePix cameras are quite nice and not too expensive. I don't
know what you mean by an arm and a leg, but we picked up an E550 for my wife
to use for her graduate school art projects. It's 6.3 megapixels, good enough
for her to shoot slides of her artwork. It has a
macro mode and can be set to varying shutter speeds so you don't have to
use the flash as long as you have a tripod.
We got our E550 for about $320, ordered online from Circuit City and picked it
up at our local store. One step down, the E510 has 5.2 megapixels and costs
about $100 less. I purchased a mini tripod at Target for $10 that sits nicely
on the tabletop and allows some good pictures.
Check my website at:
http://www.displacedminiatures.com/Internaut/galleries.aspx
for pictures taken with the E550. Any crappiness in the photos is due to
my lack of painting skills, not the camera :-)
Kevin
> damosan@comcast.net wrote:
Suggestions?
> --
There are three key factors to taking good "close-ups" of figures.
1) Good lighting - even the best camera in the world can't do much with
poor lighting, and forget flash photography on objects closer than 3 feet as
you will get a very washed out picture. If you are limited to standard indoor
fluorescent lighting, then longer exposure times are a must to get decent
results, and even so your pictures will have a yellow or blue tinge depending
on the type of fluorescent light used.
When using longer exposure times, a tripod is a must for stability. With
exposure times up to 1 second, any shakiness will translate into blurriness in
the picture.
2) Distance - contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be 6" away
from a figure to get a good "close-up". In fact, if you are too close,
your depth of field decreases and objects that are only slightly out of the
plane of view become out of focus. This is particularly important if you are
trying to capture entire units or an area with more than a few inches of
depth. To achieve a longer depth of field, start further
away (2-4 feet) from the target and use the optical (not digital) zoom
function of the camera to achieve the close-up effect.
For this to work well, look for cameras with a macro function as well as a
decent (3x or greater) optical zoom. Digital zoom does not add to the details,
as it merely interpolates between actual pixels read of a smaller area to
create a larger picture.
When using the zoom function a tripod is a must as any shakiness is amplified
by the zoom.
3) Megapixels - more is better. Decent results can be had with 4 mega
pixels, but 5 or 6 is preferrable as they allow you to "zoom-in" by
cropping the photos afterwards without any serious loss of final picture
quality. Most pictures for website use or printing a 4x6 look fine at 2
megapixel resolution, so if you start with a 4 megapixel image, you can zoom
in and crop 50% of the area and still have a respectable picture.
I personally use a Nikon 4500 Coolpix with only 4 megapixels resolution and it
does well in shooting our games and monthly miniature competition. The bigger
factors in the picture quality are usually the lighting (natural light is
best) and whether or not I used a tripod.
Hope this helps,
--Binhan
> damosan@comcast.net wrote:
Suggestions?
> --
> damosan@comcast.net wrote:
> So my question to your listers with digitals: I need a DC which is
Suggestions?
Ricoh RDC 300 (old, will be 2nd hand).
Bad bits - resolution 640x480
Good bits - focusses down to 1 cm : a 25mm torso fills the frame. A
The GZG Digest wrote on 4/26/2005 12:20 PM:
> Date: Tue, 26 Apr 2005 09:35:33 -0600 From: "B Lin"
The rule of thumb is a shutter speed no slower than 1/focal length. If
you have a 28mm wide angle lens, you can usually get away with shots of
1/30 of a second. If you have a 150mm lens, you don't want to shoot any
slower than 1/125 of a second, and probably in the 1/250 and above
range. The "rule of thumb" tends to break down a little as you go up to higher
focal lengths. I use a tripod with anything over 150mm. I would never think to
shoot my 400mm lens by hand, regardless of the speed.
> 3) Megapixels - more is better. Decent results can be had with 4
I think your numbers are a little high for web resolution, as I've been
getting decent results with my 2 megapixel Canon. A lot depends on how big
your picture is going to be, and how much detail you want to show. I typically
keep my images to about 325 pixels on the long axis, but that's because I want
the pictures to work on an 800 x 600 screen resolution, I use up about 200
pixels in columns on either side of the main part of my page, and I like to
have a little extra border around them. Since I've had people ask about buying
some of my pictures, I must be doing something right.
I wouldn't go with less than a 2 megapixel camera. I got mine two years ago,
when it was in the US$300 range. Now you can easily get a 4 megapixel for the
same price, and even some 6s are in that range.
Just remember that if you zoom in _too_ close, all of your painting
detail -- including some you might not want to show up -- will be very
visible.
I'll add a couple of extra items.
Don't forget that you'll need to buy a storage medium of some sort, whether it
be Compact Flash, SD, memory stick, etc. The more mega pixels, the more you'll
need. I have a 256 MB Compact Flash card. I've come close to filling it a few
times. That's with a 2 megapixel camera. I go with a rough guideline of a
memory card 100 times the capacity of a
single picture (so you can hold 100 high-res pictures), but if you
intend to use it mostly in the home you can get away with less. People often
forget the storage medium when they are pricing a camera, and then realize
that they can only take 10 pictures at a time with their new toy until the
next pay cheque.
You want good low light level ability. Some digitals don't handle low light
very well. You end up with noise in the dark areas, for one thing. I've tested
my camera with exposures up to 10 seconds long (and I think I could do 20
seconds) and it works rather well.
You want a camera that allows full manual mode. Eventually you'll want
to set your own exposure times and f-stops. You want a camera that
allows this. My Canon does, though because it's a fixed zoom lens I
don't have a huge range of f-stops available. I also noticed that the
Canon doesn't give me a read out of what f-stop/aperture setting to use,
but I get by with an old fashioned handheld light meter.
You want the ability to add "filters". Some of these so-called filters
are essentially a lens on top of your existing lens. Canon's PowerShot series
offers a wide angle lens and a telephoto lens, which are sometimes called
filters. I can also add a polarizing filter and other special filters courtesy
of Cokin. Not only will filters make it easier to take pictures of your minis,
you might as well have the ability to take crowd shots at conventions, or
family shots at the next reunion.
If you are going to buy only one filter in your lifetime, make it a polarizing
filter. Polarizing filters do wonderful things. They make a blue sky very blue
while leaving the clouds fluffy and white. More importantly, they cut down
reflections and glare. This is nice to have on any occasion, but it's
particularly useful on miniatures. Trust me. If the camera has the ability to
add a filter mount, buy the mount and a polarizing filter at the same time.
You can thank me later. (My next filter purchase will be a neutral density
filter, but that's not going to be a major deal if you can control your own
lighting.)
I have a Canon PowerShot A40, which I bought due to its manual setting, low
light capability, and ability to swap filters. At the time, 2 megapixels was
pretty good, and it's all I could afford. I still take better shots with my
Nikon SLR, which isn't surprising. When it comes to minis I get my best
results in natural light with reflectors using my
SLR. That having been said, the digital is a _lot_ easier to use, and
has far better colour balance in artificial lighting, and sets better
exposures. I now take almost all my mini shots in the house, using the
digital. I have no plans to upgrade to a different digital point and shoot.
The next camera I'll get will be a digital SLR, which are now regularly below
the $1000 mark and pushing down to $600.
> 3) Megapixels - more is better. Decent results can be had with 4
I
> typically keep my images to about 325 pixels on the long axis, but
Allan is quite right about the resolution (mega-pixel) issue, though it
does depend on your intended use. If you are aiming for web-use only,
then a 3 megapixel camera is plenty, as long as the camera has an optical
zoom.
For example,
http://www.stargrunt.ca/gallery_modeling/sg2_gal_gurkhas/sg2_gal_gurkhas
_8.htm
is a close-up shot of some figures that I took under fluorescent
lighting at a convention a few years back. This "close up" is actually just a
clipped part of a larger image:
http://www.stargrunt.ca/gallery_modeling/sg2_gal_gurkhas/sg2_gal_gurkhas
_9.htm
The original shot was photographed with my 3 mega-pixel camera. Neither
version on the website is at the full resolution - they've been greatly
reduced for web use. No "post-production" photo manipulation (digital
zooming, for example) was used to create the close-up, other than
clipping the bit out that I wanted. Well, I might have done some colour
correcting,
but the fact that the 3mpx camera took an image of high-enough
resolution meant that I didn't need to worry much about fiddling around trying
to zoom in.
I have a macro feature on my 70mm - 210mm zoom lens (for my 35mm SLR
camera), and have tried figure photography with that. As someone pointed out,
getting the camera close enough to use that kind of feature means that your
depth of field is paper thin. I found that I was able to focus on the figure
ok, but the depth of field was SO fine that if the front of the figure was in
focus, the back would be out, and anything else in the image (scenery, etc)
was completely blurred.
And, as was pointed out, you get *every* last little detail of your painting
technique showing up when you zoom in that close.
Having said all that, if you can afford a 5mpx or 6mpx camera - then go
for it. It will allow you to set up your shots with the camera much further
from the figures and still get good close up shots (that you can create
afterwards) if you need them. This eliminates the depth-of-field issue
with extreme zooming. I find a 3mpx camera is fine for all my web use (and I
use it professionally).
If you want good print copies of your pics, then lots of megapixels is good.
However, I've printed photos taken with my 3mpx camera at 4" x
6",
and they looked just like "real" photos. If you want prints larger than
4x6, then the more megapixels the merrier...
> --- damosan@comcast.net wrote:
Nikon has a good range of 4-6 megapixel cameras in the $250-$350 range.
For shooting minis and games, you can get a little tripod (8"-12") for
$30-$50. This is the kind that you set on a table, rather than a full
size one.
J
> damosan@comcast.net wrote:
Don't rule out used equipment. I've gotten great results with a Nikon
Coolpix 800 I got used from B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com).
> On Tue, Apr 26, 2005 at 06:06:42PM -0400, Adrian Johnson wrote:
> Allan is quite right about the resolution (mega-pixel) issue, though it
> does depend on your intended use. If you are aiming for web-use only,
My pictures from GZG-ECC 6 were done on a 3MPix Coolpix 990: