Website Photos....

TinGoat

Ignorant know it all
This is a reply to Jon-Monon from the "Scratchin' & Bashin'" > "Tips and Tricks" Sticky Thread Website Images.... I thought that it was more appropriate to post here....

Originally posted by jon-monon
Hi Ron!

I didn't realize who you are until now. Yes, indeed, you are good with the 35 MM, especially when following an SRS :D :D :D http://www.ultimatejeep.com/monon/srs.html

I'm glad you brought up this grainy problem, I've heard it before, but I can't seem to duplicate the problem here....

I think my images are too big. If the thumbs look good but the enlarged ones gets grainy, I probably just need to tone them down a little. Please let me know if there are any that are particularly bad.

jon

Hi Jon,

I take all of my photos with a Canon "Aqua Snappy" 35 mm and 200 ASA film (fixed focus. :( ). I'm thinking of trying 800 film for photograghing my modelling efforts. I hope that this will help me get around my fixed focus problems by being able to crop and resize the images. I'd also like to get my own negative scanner. A friend of mine in the IT department tells me that you can now get a regular flatbed scanner with an adaptor for scanning film negatives.

When I get the film developed, I have a photo CD made. I find that images scanned directly from the negative are sharper than ones scanned from prints. Ask your photo lab which way they do it. The images tend to be of much higher resolution than any digital camera and the file size is usually over 500 kb. George Elwood prefers that origional unedited images be e-mailed to him and he will crop, edit and resize them for his Erie Lackawanna and other Fallen Flag and Shortline Railroad Photos. Read George Elwood's section "Submitting Material" for more information on posting images on the web.

What I have found is that you can always take a large image and make it smaller. If you take a small image and try to blow it up, you end up with grainy/blurry pictures.

In your case, the thumbs are good, but some of your larger images get grainy. Images that are 323 x 166 pixels and 565 x 317 pixels, for example, are okey. The larger images of the "Shack on a Raft" are 1110 x 500 pixels and 971 x 388 pixels, are grainy.

Your SRS picture is good, except for the lighting, but I understand that this was unaviodable due to the time of day that the picture was taken. I had the same problem, but because I could get closer, I was able to use the flash on my camera.

There are other websites that have advice on how to post images to websites. I think that there is something in "The Acadamy" on digital images as well as on the Website Photographs.

I hope this helps.
 

TinGoat

Ignorant know it all
Jon's Reply...

Originally posted by jon-monon

I think you will find the 800 speed film is more grainy and won't be as nice after cropping and enlarging as the 200 speed is. The 800 has improved ten fold on grainyness since it's introduction, but it is still not nearly as sharp as slower speeds.

I put a florescent under cabinet lamp over some slides and was able to scan them pretty well. I did not have as good of luck with negatives, because of the orange tint, but there shouold be some filtering available to correct that. Ex.:

patsbar.jpg


A natural colored tube like a grow light should work better. Maybe worth a shot for $7 if you already have the scanner...

I thought the prob was a size issue, but his photo's are larger than mine. I think the problem is size vs. original. I need to start with a hi res original, then scale it down. I've done this in many cases, but not with a lot of the recent digital photos; I was attempting to scale down by starting with a small image. Opps :(

Yes, I have noticed thet they don't enlarge well, most of my photo's are shrunken versions of the original.

That helps to narrow it down a lot. I did a test page, before I read your post, it will take forever to load if on dial up. It has one image which is a hi res scan, then I scaled it down in steps, then a digital cam image, also scaling down.

Test Page (SLOW LOADING!)

There were only a couple of acceptable images out of the whole roll, 500 MM lense, low light, no tripod; thank goodness for the 800 ASA film! If you were my neighbor and had an old Minolta X series (manual focus) you lense shortage would be over. I have everything covered from 28 to way larger than practical and 2 or 3 do macro. Maybe I'll just start using it and dump the old digital until I get a better one (how's the collection? C'mon, it only takes a couple of $100 :D ).

Yes thanks for the tips! I am still perplexed as to why the images look OK to me. Some of the autogenerated pages, the ones that are thumbnailed, are crude because I haven't done anything with them. The other images bother me if they don't look good. Perhaps I shouldn't put up the thumbnailed ones until I resize them. The shack ona raft that I posted on this forum was way too big.

If you or anyone has time to load up that test page I would certainly appreciate hearing which ones look bad. They are numbered for easy ID.

Thanks!

jon

Test Page (SLOW LOADING!)
 

TinGoat

Ignorant know it all
Re: Jon's Reply...

Originally posted by Jon-Monon
I put a florescent under cabinet lamp over some slides and was able to scan them pretty well. I did not have as good of luck with negatives, because of the orange tint, but there should be some filtering available to correct that.

I think that the florescent light bulb you are using is probably a warm white. That might be causing the orange tint. A cool white might help. Then again, it will likely tint your images blue...

Slides are good, because you are using a positive image. If you try using film negatives, you will really have colour problems. Blues will be orange, Reds will be green, Yellows will be Purple, Blacks will be White and vice versa!

Some image editing software will have a feature that will convert a positive image into a negative. It would therefore convert the negative to a positive. You should also be able to convert colour images to black and white. That will take away the orange tint. Also, look under filters in your image software. There should be a way to get rid of the orange tint in colour images without getting rid of other colours.

I've been thinking that I would like to get my hands on a Photo Enlager.... (That's the thingy that projects the image from the film negative on to the photopaper to create the picture.) At first, I figured that it would be good for projecting images onto styrene for scratchbuilding. If what you are describing works with slides to scan into your computer, then a photo enlager would work here too... It uses a purer white incandescent light than what you have in the florescent light, so there should be no colour distortion or tinting.

I took a look at your test page. The first scanned image is very clear and crisp. The second image from the digital camera is slightly grainy and the detail on the truck side frames is impossible to make out. Also, it seems as though there is glare, like the flash was too close to the object, or the object was too shiny. Image #4 or #5 seems to be a good size to go with. Anything larger is too grainy, and anything smaller requires a magnifying glass. How many mega pixels is your digital camera? It might be worthwhile to take up that collection to get a higher resolution digital camera.

It seems that a lot of guys are putting their models directly on to their flat bed scanners. It gives the impression that your model is floating in space, but the images are very crisp and clear. You may want to try this out. If you do, you may want to cover the model with a soft cloth or towel. This will cut down on light polution from other sources than the light from the scanner.

I had a friend in highschool with a really nice Canon AE-1 with all the extras. He used to smuggle it into concerts and sell the pictures for a buck or two each. He made a lot of pocket money this way. It paid for the concert tickets, film and developing, and other stuff too...

Thanks for the advice re, 800 vs. 200 ASA film. I'll stick with the 200...
 
I'm no photography expert; but I looked at the page, and here are my thoughts.

I vote for A3 and B2. The reasons being that a) they are small enough to see all on one screen without having to go either right-left or up-down and b) that they seem to give the most detail, without getting grainy.
 

jon-monon

Active Member
Re: Re: Jon's Reply...

Originally posted by TinGoat


Slides are good, because you are using a positive image. If you try using film negatives, you will really have colour problems. Blues will be orange, Reds will be green, Yellows will be Purple, Blacks will be White and vice versa!
Yes, I reversed the colors, but there is still an error with color negatives. It's orange when it's negative and I think it gets pink or blue when you reverse the colors. This is probably not a problem to adjust for you, but I have a slight color blindness and I can make some really ugly stuff if I go tweaking colors! It's explained a little:

http://www.photographical.net/minolta_pro_neg.html

You will see what I mean when you scan...

This tells you how to fix it in the Gimp:

http://www.khk.net/sane/gimp_negative_scanning.html

BTW: you can get the gimp free for windows or Linux. There's a link to the windows site at gimp.org.

I also forgot to mention, you will need some glass or plexiglass to place on the negative to keep it flat.

model with a soft cloth or towel. This will cut down on light polution from other sources than the light from the scanner.
I've done that some, good idea for the towel. You get some funny aberations too, like plastic trucks get "oil rainbows". Enlarger idea might be cool to try.
I had a friend in highschool with a really nice Canon AE-1 with all the extras. He used to smuggle it into concerts and sell the pictures for a buck or two each. He made a lot of pocket money this way. It paid for the concert tickets, film and developing, and other stuff too...
Hmmmm... AE-1, were talkin' late 70's/early 80's, right? Now, what kinda "other stuff" might a high school kid at a 70's rock concert want? Ah, a T shirt! :D :D :D
Thanks for the advice re, 800 vs. 200 ASA film. I'll stick with the 200...

Thank you for all the help.

Oh, yes, the camera, betcha thot I was going to dodge that question :D:D:D

OK, it was a $1000 camera, no joke. Top end. Too bad that was 10 years ago and now you can get one for $100 that's better (at least as far as resolution. What's a Megapixel? :D:D:D I'd have to have a look at it, I think it's less than 1 M :( No poking fun at my camera! :mad: It was free to me. It does have some nice features, like macro capability and a decent autofocus (thus the washed out flash you noticed; it was less than 16" back from subj., because I did have to turn on the macro focus.

OK, I'll get a better one or stick to real film and scanning. What's the collection up to now? I'll get some better stuff when I get a good place to set up a decent home PC.

Best wishes,

jon
 

jon-monon

Active Member
Also, thanks Dave and Ron for looking at the test page and giving feedback!

Here's a scanned and reversed negative.
 

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    neg.jpg
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TinGoat

Ignorant know it all
Blue tint.

Actually, the blue tint isn't that bad. It gives the picture some crispness. The Orange makes things look old. The colour correction is pretty good.

I use Linux Mandrake at home with the GIMP. I am in the process of learning all the things that the GIMP can do, but there is a steep learning curve involved.
 

jon-monon

Active Member
Fellow Penguineer!

The Gimp Rocks. I downloaded the manual too. It's not too hard to use; it's just wierd compared to Windows progs. Once you find the locations of everything, it's not too bad. I got the windows version, too, for when I am forced against my will to boot into W98 :mad:

jon
 

jon-monon

Active Member
BTW: I'm really getting excited about my new digital camera! How's the collection coming along? Are you going to send me the cash or will you be ordering it for me and just mail me the camera? I would like one with a LCD and macro cap., but hey, with all the folks on this board, if everyone just klicks in $5 or $10 we should be able to get a really nice one!

:D :D :D

hohoho

jon
 

TinGoat

Ignorant know it all
Pennies from Heaven...

Originally posted by jon-monon
BTW: I'm really getting excited about my new digital camera! How's the collection coming along? Are you going to send me the cash or will you be ordering it for me and just mail me the camera? I would like one with a LCD and macro cap., but hey, with all the folks on this board, if everyone just klicks in $5 or $10 we should be able to get a really nice one!

:D :D :D

hohoho

jon

Well, not Heaven exactly, but from above... The Great Lakes, that is. :D

I was going to mail you a roll of pennies, but I had to spend the pennies to buy the stamps to mail the pennies. Now I have stamps, but no pennies. Sometimes, I just can't win. :(
 
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