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| Good photography tips and tricks | ||
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Moderators: SteveR, brentlymills, brickfrenzy, kepplah, ColourSchemer, jaydubya, Inquisitor General, Professor Whateverly
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| brickfrenzy |
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phr43k Contributor Adrian Drakeposts: 1488 | Now's as good a time as any to broach a design topic that is frequently ignored, but is almost as important as the MOC itself: Photography and Presentation. You could have the greatest creation in the world, but if your pictures are crap, nobody is going to care. The biggest problems I see on MOC photography are: 1. Images too damn big 2. Blurry shots 3. Crappy lighting 4. Cluttered backgrounds Each one of these can be dealt with easily and relatively cheaply. Sometimes even for free. BIG IMAGES The big images problem is the easiest to fix. If your camera is outputting pictures greater than 800x600, you really should crop and/or scale them. There are lots of programs out there that can do this. Some, like Paint Shop Pro (my personal favorite) and Photoshop are very robust image editing suites, but you can get very good results. Others, like Gimp are free. For the novice, who only wants to scale, crop, and do very simple things, I would highly recommend IrfanView. It's a small download, is free, is pretty easy to use, and can go a long way to making your images more presentable. BLURRY SHOTS Blurry shots are frequently due to a couple of causes: A crappy camera, not staying in the focus range of your camera, and low light. If you have a crappy camera, well you're out of luck. If you're using a camcorder or webcam to take your shots, please beg, borrow or steal a real photography option. Otherwise, read your owner's manual. Learn about focus range and macro zoom. If you don't have an owner's manual, search google. You can find a lot of information on the internet to help you to use your camera properly and efficiently. CRAPPY LIGHTING More lighting does not equal better lighting. The right lighting equals better lighting. All of my pictures on BrickFrenzy, at least those taken in the last 2 years, are done with simply overhead fluorescent lighting, a clean background, and a little bit of contrast adjustment in Paint Shop Pro. Take your pictures outdoors on a cloudy day if you can't get good lighting. Just use a backdrop. CLUTTERED BACKGROUNDS An awesome MOC means nothing if you've got fences, computer monitors, or your kid brother in the background. The absolute simplest and easiest way to get a clean background is to find a spot against a wall, tape a poster backwards to the wall and let it sweep down onto the table. Put your MOC on the poster and photo away. OTHER RESOURCES If you're in the mood to read a very long but very informative tutorial on how to take very nice pictures, try here. This thread on Lugnet talks technique. There's also a whole section on Lugnet dedicated to this, although it hasn't been posted to very much recently. Now, those of you who take good pictures, please post up your hints, tips and tricks. It will make the world a better place. [ Edited Sun Feb 19 2006, 11:23PM ] | ||
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| Inquisitor General |
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Runs Bartertown Main Admin Dan Rubinposts: 1040 | I just wanted to add another tip for not taking blurry shots. And that's keeping the camera still. If you can't get a tripod (they can be as cheap as 10 bucks) please, at least rest the camera on a stack of books or something. This can make a big difference, especially if your lights aren't very bright. -Dan NewBrickOrder Lego Ambassador | ||
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| jonpalmer |
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Moonbase Commander Jon Palmer posts: 309 | I propose we make a good photography and presentation thread sticky because bad or big photos have been and always will be the chief reason I won't look at a MOC. And I want to look at a lot of MOCs. Also see this. [ j o n ] [ z e m i . n e t ] | ||
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| Chief |
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ry Ryan Wood posts: 348 | "Inquisitor General" said ... I just wanted to add another tip for not taking blurry shots. And that's keeping the camera still. If you can't get a tripod (they can be as cheap as 10 bucks) please, at least rest the camera on a stack of books or something. This can make a big difference, especially if your lights aren't very bright. Cheaper, even. The Grand Admiral and I paid a visit to a photography store during the last NWBC weekend, and we both purchased nifty little adjustable tripods that cost I think $6. It's only about 4 inches tall, but for the average moc builder, that's more than enough.  ..curious, that looks like the GA's camera ..how did I end up with that? >:) By land, by sea, by dirigible, We'll leave our tracks untraceable. | ||
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| Sastrei |
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Pixelman Stefan posts: 818 | For photos, you can usually size them in the camera's settings as well. Mine can output at 640x480 up to 1600x1200. Also check your speed and ISO settings, I have to manually set mine to the highest to get the thing to take non-blurry pics. -Stefan- Happiness is smashing children upon the rocks (Psalms 137:9) | ||
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| jonpalmer |
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| Moonbase Commander Jon Palmer posts: 309 | "Ry" said ... ..curious, that looks like the GA's camera ..how did I end up with that? >:) MmmmHmmm..  [ j o n ][ z e m i . n e t ] | ||
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| lar |
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| Anonymous Coward posts: 79 | I'm a fan of taking large images and scaling/cropping in PSP or whatever processor rather than ratcheting the camera resolution down. Memory is cheap. Get a big memory card, it will only set you back 50 or so. Here are my rules, some were already mentioned above (which we used for Nik's GECK:O, those shots were taken in 5 min after we saw Adrian's tracked vehicle, Nik begged me to take pics of his too... I would submit that those came out OK for 5 min pics although I am not as good as many people): 1) Use a tripod. 2) Don't use flash, it introduces glare. 3) Get as much light on the subject as you can. Shoot near windows. Adding multiple lights to get rid of shadows help too. 4) Use the camera timer function so that you aren't introducing jiggle... it takes 10 seconds to do a pic but it is a vast improvement over pressing the shutter button yourself. 5) Get one of those big pieces of white paper/posterboard to use as a backdrop, or at least use a white towel or something. Then when you process your images, crop away the stuff you don't want (1) then reduce to a common format/size. Only allow jpg compression to happen once, but DO allow it. I like 480x640 (or the reverse for shots that go the other way) but do not go much bigger than 800x600 or people get mad. 1 - to dimensions that have good GCFs (2) with your final size, that is, if your final is 480x640, 960x1280 is a great thing to crop to, as the GCD for 480 and 960 is 480... 900 x 1200 is not too bad as the GCF is 60, but 666x888 is terrible as the GCF is only 6. This causes a lot of interpolation which in my view robs resolution. 2 - Greatest common factor | ||
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| bram |
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lazy Bram Lambrecht posts: 695 | JPEG breaks an image down into 8x8 pixel blocks, so I suppose sticking with image sizes divisible by 8 makes sense...like 800x600 or 640x480 for example. It's also aesthetically pleasing when all your thumbnails have the same aspect ratio(1) (such as the common 4:3 for screen resolutions). You can set the aspect ratio of the rectangular selection tool in Photoshop to make sure that your cropped photos are all the same shape before you resample them down to the same size. 1) Or you can be lame like Adrian and squish all your thumbnails into squares instead of cropping them correctly. Custom aluminum brick keychains: http://shop.bldesign.org | ||
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| brickfrenzy |
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| phr43k Contributor Adrian Drakeposts: 1488 | "bram" said ... 1) Or you can be lame like Adrian and squish all your thumbnails into squares instead of cropping them correctly. I'm not lame, I'm lazy. There is a difference. You want to write me a new web page so that the images are cropped properly before being thumbnailed, you're more than welcome to it. I'm too busy being a dad. | ||
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| jonpalmer |
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| Moonbase Commander Jon Palmer posts: 309 | Bram got served. [ j o n ] [ z e m i . n e t ] | ||
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| Slice151 |
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Token Asian Spacer Fradel Gonzales posts: 304 | You can also just jet over to Silverspring MD and use Dan's sweet sweet setup. Semper Fradelis "Cut like a ninja, slice like a razor blade>" -Vanilla Ice | ||
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| thebrickbin |
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 Chris Perron posts: 287 | I just wanted to add that the backdrop I use is a large sheet of foamboard. It is very stiff, but has a nice smooth and glossy effect. You can get them at craft stores for about $4.00 USD. ~Chris Perron | ||
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| Cello Collin |
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Teh Cellonator Collin Harvey posts: 21 | I use a large roll of "polar blue"-colored seamless for shooting some of my MOCs on. Positioned right, it looks gorgeous. I also use two light grey baseplates sometimes. One to sit the MOC on, and one standing up behind it. Le result. There's always room for C-E-L-L-O! »Flickr Gallery!«•»O5 Radio Show Adventure!« | ||
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| Sklar |
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| Anonymous Coward posts: 43 | Myself being a pretty bad photographer, I'd say possibly the most important part of taking pictures is a steady hand holding the camera, or a steady tripod to put the camera on. I don't own a tripod, nor do I have such a steady hand, but I'm working on that second one. As for backgrounds, I like to drape a plain white sheet over the top of my curtain-holder-thingie in front of my window, and have it curve down onto my bed (which is right under said window), making sure that there are no (or little) noticeably large seams or folds in it, then set the model on, and photograph away. I usually use a soft 60 watt white light bulb for lighting, and no flash. This gives for some nice results. | ||
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| brickfrenzy |
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| phr43k Contributor Adrian Drakeposts: 1488 | A full height (48 inch or more) tripod can be had at Best Buy for like $20 or so. Before you buy another Star Wars set, buy a tripod. Trust me, it is a much better investment. | ||
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