Photography tips needed

[Sparrow]

I have uploaded a few different frames but whenever I take the pics they lose so much... pizzaz...? I don't know but the colours are not as rich and the pics are not as detail any suggestions? take a look at some of my posts and tell me what you think. Thanks in advance!

[Dukayn]

You're most recent posts look fine, really. They're not MittenNinja level but that guy's got serious photography skills, at least when it comes to presenting Lego mechs

I would possibly suggest a dedicated light source for the photos. I've found that using the ambient light in the room sometimes leads to utter photo failure. I only have the LED torch on my mobile phone to use as a light source though so I don't tend to use it that often as it's hard to do that and take a photo at the same time.

With my photos I use my wife's Fuji Finepix camera which is pretty decent. I stick it on manual focus and that helps a lot I've found as I can tweak it to get the focus just how I want it (of course sometimes you get the photos on the computer and find out they are all actually completely out of focus and you have to go again).

Out of curiosity what camera are you using for the photos?

[goshawn]

What kind of equipment are we talking about? I would live to be of assistance if I can.

[Sparrow]

What kind of equipment are we talking about? I would live to be of assistance if I can.

My phone :/

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

Some images would really aid here.

[Dukayn]

What kind of equipment are we talking about? I would live to be of assistance if I can.

My phone :/

You're not going to get really good photos with a phone camera. My best advice with phone cameras is to make sure there's plenty of light as that seems to really effect the quality of the photos.

Try creating a lightbox from this tutorial (it's really quite simple) and see if that helps. I am planning on building one soon, as I'm getting frustrated that my photos tend to be in the hit-and-miss category.

[Joshua A.C. Newman]

The iPhone camera is pretty spectacular. Most of my pics are taken with it, though I have an old PowerShot that's more forgiving for stills.

I made a lightbox a whole lot like that. Right now I'm using a larger setup with a piece of drawing vellum as a diffuser both under/behind the subject and over the light.

[Dukayn]

The iPhone 4 and 4s cameras are pretty great, yeah. But most phone cameras aren't. I was assuming Sparrow was in the latter category, but even the iPhone cameras would benefit from a lightbox

Gotta realise that most phone cameras are there for people to take drunk duckface photos of themselves in the mirror or at a club, or to have heavy filters via Instagram

[MittenNinja]

I use a Nikon d90 with super cheap lightbox that I bought for $20 (it was marketed as something to take pictures of items to sell on Ebay). One of the lights already broke, but the walls of the box are still doing well. Having a good DSLR camera with a solid lens will do wonders.

[schoon]

You can find tutorials here

... or here.

[ferrelferret]

I use my phone to take photos too. I have an LED lamp I picked up at Target as a light source. It works well.

~ferret~

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk 2

[zeekhotep]

Anyone have a tutorial on taking drunk duck-face pics of ones-self?

[Sparrow]

I use my phone to take photos too.

Good to know I'm not the only one! Since everyone suggests a light box I'm definitely going to make one ASAP.

[goshawn]

I use my phone to take photos too.

Good to know I'm not the only one! Since everyone suggests a light box I'm definitely going to make one ASAP.

Something you can do:

If you have a window that gets good light, you can use that. If it's too harsh, a diffuser will go a long way. Something as simple as thin paper, or a gauzy curtain.

Another thing:

If you have a flash on your phone, you can make a decent attempt at an infinite white background like I've done here (http://www.flickr.com/photos/goshawn/71 ... otostream/). I used a DSLR and a light tent and two flashes but you could perhaps succeed at the same thing with a roughly $10 investment. This flash, http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002X3 ... B002X3VBFK, can be set to go off when another flash goes off, it has a sensor that optically detects another flash.

Setting up white paper as the base and curving up to the back ground point that cheap flash linked above at the background behind your mechs and set it to Slave. This will blow out your back ground and your camera/phone flash will illuminate your subject. If your camera/phone flash is too bright on the subject, you can dial back the power a little if you have that option, or place a scrap of semi-translucent something over the flash.

Disclaimer: I have never used tis method with a camera phone flash. I can not guaranty that the camera flash will be string enough to trigger the cheap flash. I think it will though and you over all investment is about $10.

Let me know if you have any questions.

[carbonbass]

I need to build myself another lightbox. It seems they get dismantled/tossed right about the time I need to take more macro-shots.

[goldenmeanie]

Nothing beats a good original and there are a bunch of good tips above! But you can probably rescue many shots that you aren’t happy with right out of the camera. The main problem with light box shots is that many cameras will try to find a 30% gray in that sea or white. This ends up making the images look dull. If you have access to Photoshop or Gimp. Look for Levels and play around with the histogram to punch up the image.

The other common issue with macro shots is focus. Especially if you are struggling with light, the aperture will be wide open and the focal depth will be really shallow. That’s how Mittens is getting those great shots with the melter attachments blurring as they reach out for you! The downside is that it can be easy to focus on the wrong bit. Even if you get the focus set right, camera shake can soften the image. If your camera has a timer (and a tripod) you can use it to give your camera time to settle down from the button push before taking the picture. If you don’t have a tripod, you can get a long way with a stack of books. That super-bendy Gorilla Pod is not too expensive.

[lt_col_thorin]

Anyone have a tutorial on taking drunk duck-face pics of ones-self?

Step 1: Drink like a fish. The cheaper the alcohol, the better.
Step 2: Find a duck...

[Wordman]

A tripod is very, very useful in situations like this (note, you can get adaptors for mounting iPhones on tripods, for some reason). Even with a tripod, though, you can have depth of field problems, like this:



To combat this, you need to close the aperture on the camera (the aperture is the hole through which the light travels to hit the "film"). It is one of the things that controls how much light is captured during a shot. The other is shutter speed. The smaller the aperture, the greater the depth of field (the "margin of error" in focus from the main focal point) is. In order to make the aperture smaller, you can two two things:

1) Increase the amount of light.

2) Leave the shutter open longer.

Generally, the latter is easier with cameras that allow you to set such things. The drawback is that longer shutter times make it easier for vibration to blur the image. With a tripod, that is not really a problem. (This is what I should have done when taking the shot above.)

With phone cameras, you probably don't have this kind of control over the device, have to do the former and pour light into the sucker.

[calculus]

Here's an example picture I did this morning with a camera phone, a window (not facing the sun), and a piece of paper.



Setup shot here

(Sadly, I have no frames to shoot - all my old legos, except this one guy are at my parents.)

[goldenmeanie]

Great work! You can reduce the shadow (if desired) by using a white sheet of paper to bounce some of the window light back toward the mini from the left.