How To Take Better Pictures Of Your Setup...Photography 1101.

[CanesFan95]

...because of typos or grammatical errors. The same is true for photos, it does no good if people can't see see what is supposed to be in the picture.

LOL. I couldn't help it, but that's just too funny! But hey, given my grammar, I couldn't have said that better myself. :twisted: Okay, all kidding aside, that's a good point.

Also, I did wanna thank everyone for all the kind werdz. I'm glad this got to be a sticky, so thanks tto the mods as well.

There's a LOT more I could add with all the photography stuff, and even my supposed knowledge is only introductory at best. Hopefully certain people will re-do their shack photos and post updated threads with their improved photos. :lol:

 

[blantonl]

Homeboys-Scanna,

I consider this such a great posting and reference for all of the rest of us that I'm giving you a full 360 day premium subscription for the site.

What a great post!

Warm regards,

Lindsay

 

[CanesFan95]

Alright!! Thanks a lot for that. I didn't see that coming. Hopefully I'll have more spare time in a few months (whenever the ghastly CPA exam is finally done) to post a few more things with examples.

Thanks again.

 

[af5rn]

I consider this such a great posting and reference for all of the rest of us that I'm giving you a full 360 day premium subscription for the site.

Whoever posts a good grammar and spelling guide deserves a lifetime premium subscription! :lol:

 

[lowboy654]

Very cool thanks for the lesson.
ken

 

[CanesFan95]

ISO Noise

ISO Noise

ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization but I've more commonly heard it called International Standards Organization. It refers to the sensitivity of camera film or a digital camera's sensor and is sometimes called "speed". The higher the ISO "speed" the more sensitive to light the film or digital camera sensor is, resulting in brighter photos. The lower the ISO, the lower the sensitivity is and the darker the images will be. I guess the International Standards Organization does a lot of things, so why in the world this particular camera setting is called "ISO" is beyond me. Personally I would have simply called it brightness. :roll:

There is one big drawback with using too high of an ISO setting. It results in photos that have a grainy appearance like they have sand in them or like an old TV set getting a weak signal. This is referred to as noise, and the higher you set the ISO, the more noise you'll have in the photos. The first 2 images below were taken with an ISO of 80 and the next 2 photos were taken with an ISO of 800. (For some reason the Canon A710 IS camera doesn't seem to be saving the ISO setting in the EXIF data, so you'll just have to take my word for it. )

Clearly, the last 2 photos (with the much higher ISO of 800) are inferior in quality. Grainy noisy photos are a common thing I see in the forum once in a while (especially with cell phone camera shots - another reason to avoid cell phone cameras! ), so I thought I'd mention it here. ISO noise becomes less noticeable when the photo is resized to a smaller percentage, but it can still cause photos not to look as sharp and crisp as they would with a lower ISO.

If using the camera's auto mode, the camera might choose a high ISO in low-lighting conditions which will cause this graininess, so the more ambient lighting ( "ambient" = the normal light in the room/environment), the better. Any extra lamps, worklights, lanterns etc. that can be setup and used will help cause the camera to choose a lower ISO when in auto mode so that the photos won't be as noisy. This explains why people using auto mode on their cameras (or other auto settings on the dial such as "Portrait", "Landscape", or "Fireworks") sometimes get nasty grainy photos. Then again, there's plenty of times where with good lighting the auto mode works great and there's lots of nice shots on the forum to prove it.

Really, the best thing to do (in my opinion) is to shoot in full manual mode and use a tripod. This allows you to manually choose the ISO setting yourself so that it won't be too high and thus you won't get those sandy-looking photos of your scanners. With a tripod, you're free to use a slower shutter speed without camera shake blur, so that the picture won't come out too dark.

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Camera Settings Are About Tradeoffs

Now that you know a bit about the 3 main camera settings that make up the exposure (shutter speed, aperture, & ISO), you can see with a little bit of trial and error in full manual mode how you must compensate for changing one setting, by having to then change another setting. Increasing the shutter speed makes for a less blurry photo when shooting handheld, but it also makes the picture come out darker. To then compensate for this and make the picture brighter, you could increase the ISO, but that might make for a noisier photo, -OR- you could open up the aperture (choose a lower f-number) to let in more light, but that may cause some objects at different distances not to appear in focus. Then again, if the lighting is too low to begin with, a faster shutter speed could cause the photo to come out completely black altogether so that you have no choice but to accept a little bit of blurriness due to camera shake.

It's all about tradeoffs and making decisions depending on what you're shooting, because there's a limit to how far the camera settings can be adjusted in any direction. You could literally be up until MIDNIGHT trying all the different combinations of settings. Even attaining an exposure value (EV) of a perfect -0- on the camera's exposure meter on the LCD display could still render an underexposed photo ("underexposed" = too dark) if the scanner is black in color or the desk has a dark wood color.


Thank God for auto mode! :lol:

 

[CanesFan95]

Photography Quiz

Photography Quiz

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1. Assuming no other camera settings are changed, which of the following statements about shutter speed is correct?

a.) A 1/160 shutter speed results in a brighter photo and has less blur due to camera shake than 1/125.
b.) A 1/160 shutter speed results in a brighter photo and has more blur due to camera shake than 1/125.
c.) A 1/160 shutter speed results in a darker photo and has less blur due to camera shake than 1/125.
d.) A 1/160 shutter speed results in a darker photo and has more blur due to camera shake than 1/125.

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2. When shooting in manual mode, an underexposed digital photo can best be compensated for by:

a.) Increasing the ISO and decreasing the f-number.
b.) Increasing the shutter speed and increasing the ISO.
c.) Stopping down the aperture and decreasing the shutter speed.
d.) Decreasing the ISO and opening up the aperture.

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3. Of the following 4 photos, which one most likely was taken with the most stopped-down aperture (highest f-number) ?

a.)

b.)

c.)

d.)

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Solutions to be posted next weekend...

 

[CanesFan95]

Quiz Solutions

1. (c) The faster the shutter speed, the darker the photo will come out but the less camera shake blur there will be if you're shooting handheld. The higher the denominator number, the faster the shutter speed is, which gives the camera less time to collect light that is saved into the image, resulting in a darker photo. But the shorter timeframe of collecting light also reduces the amount of blurriness saved into the image as well.

Suppose you snap a photo of a running dog and the dog runs 3 feet during the time that the shutter is open, the camera will record and save 3 feet worth of blurriness into the photo. Now suppose you use a faster shutter speed and perhaps the dog only moves three-tenths of an inch during the time that the shutter is open, now you'll only get 3/10 of an inch worth of blurriness.

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2. (a) Underexposed simply means the picture came out too dark, so to compensate for this in manual mode you have to adjust the settings to make it brighter. Increasing the ISO makes the camera sensor more sensitive to light, resulting in a brighter (but noisier) image. Decreasing the f-number means that you're opening up the aperture (widening the "iris" of the camera) which allows more light to hit the sensor making for a brighter picture.

Answer (b) is incorrect because increasing the shutter speed will make the picture come out even more underexposed. Letter (c) is wrong because "stopping down" the aperture means you are making the aperture smaller (narrowing the "iris" by increasing the f-number) which lets in less light further underexposing the photo. Letter (d) is incorrect since reducing the ISO setting makes the picture come out darker as well.

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3. (b) A more stopped-down aperture (higher f-number) causes various different distances of the subject to appear in better focus than wider apertures. Notice how in letter (d) only part of the weather radio appears to be in focus, but with letter (b) almost the entire radio looks in focus. This indicates that letter (b) was taken with a smaller aperture. Answer (a) is not the best answer because the photo is more underexposed with high ISO nose than anything, and letter (c) is also not the best answer because the entire photo is simply out of focus making it too hard to judge the depth-of-field.


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Bored Yet ?

 

[KC4RAF]

Homeboys-Scanna and others, thanks for the tips

on getting better quality photos for posting, and otherwise. I for one appreciate the tips and hopefully will use them soon. Tx again.

 

[CanesFan95]

Dang It !!

It appears as though not all of my pictures are loading sometimes. Imageshack has a way of doing that for some reason. I'm gonna have to figure out something more reliable. After a certain timeframe, it looks like the forums don't let you edit old posts.

 

[bezking]

All of the images load for me...

 

[CanesFan95]

Okay, thanks. I re-uploaded the ones that were missing and put in a request to the mods to change it last week. Looks like it's working again, for now.

 

[majoco]

If you want a pic of something small and reasonably flat, try laying it on the glass of your document scanner with a piece of black material behind it - works well!

 

[BaLa]

Why you delete teh Exif?

too much trouble...if I was going to post a pic on here..
I just use Auto, but Thanks for teh tips.


Auto - http://wiki.radioreference.com/index.php/Image:Pro95TapPt.jpg FujiS3000

 

[burner50]

Why you delete teh Exif?

too much trouble...if I was going to post a pic on here..
I just use Auto, but Thanks for teh tips.


Auto - Imagero95TapPt.jpg - The RadioReference Wiki FujiS3000

Its fixed.

Anyone who sees broken images here, report the post and I'll contact Homeboys-Scanna and hopefully we can keep these images up... Apparently Imageshack is having some problems.

 

[duchee]

i agree! keep up the great pics!

 

[burner50]

For specific questions, please use the Photography forum.


Photography - The RadioReference.com Forums

 

[RES51CUE]

i have kodack camera/recoder so how do i set it to take both great pictures and videos

 

[JoeyC]

i have kodack camera/recoder so how do i set it to take both great pictures and videos

Did you even read the thread?
Go to the beginning of the thread and start reading.
If there were one setting to take great pictures and videos on any camera, we'd all be great photographers...

 

[CanesFan95]

i have kodack camera/recoder so how do i set it to take both great pictures and videos

This is probably a better question for a photography forum, but I would say just practice using the camera. Try to get familiar with all the settings, menus, etc..

Once you're familiar with the camera, try going through this thread a couple times. Good luck!