Question for Bill H or anyone. . .

Bill Huber said:

Well how big are they or did I just miss that part.

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Bill Huber said:

If I was outside I would have use a big sheet to diffuse the light.
The angles can be cleaned up in PhotoShop, just get them the best
you could.

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Bill Huber said:

Inside I would have put them on the floor and a level on the camera.
I would have tried to us a bounce flash or diffused light reflected
off white boards.

I don't know I would just have to play around until I got it....

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Bill Huber said:

--
Bill Huber, Fort Worth, Tx
UZI, http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber

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Richard70 said:

Hey Knox,
I did quite a fey for a freind who wanted to post her prints on
line. I just did it on my kitchen table hand held. wish I still had
them to show you. looked like the real thing! You have to have the
camera straight above the photo to get it square, and if I remember
correctly, The sizing wasn't quite the same (the frame of the
camera compared to the photo itself)
Hope this helps

--
Richard

Please visit my fotoalbum:
http://www.fototime.com/inv/F52512550C1770C

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Knox / streetkid said:

Bill Huber said:

Well how big are they or did I just miss that part.

Click to expand...

roughly 2 feet by 1 foot.

Knox / streetkid said:

If I was outside I would have use a big sheet to diffuse the light.
The angles can be cleaned up in PhotoShop, just get them the best
you could.

Click to expand...

the lighting was the easy part . .(natural . .sun). Cropping in
Photoshop was out of the question as they were signed and numbered
at the botoms and this was needed in the photo.

Knox / streetkid said:

Inside I would have put them on the floor and a level on the camera.
I would have tried to us a bounce flash or diffused light reflected
off white boards.

I don't know I would just have to play around until I got it....

Click to expand...

yes, maybe the floor would have been a better answer or table. I
hated putting expensive prints on the floor or ground and i didn't
want to use a flash. It was proper angles without computer cropping
that threw me.

Knox / streetkid said:

--
Bill Huber, Fort Worth, Tx
UZI, http://www.pbase.com/wlhuber

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--
Knox (w/C-5O5O) pbase supporter
http://www.pbase.com/streetkid/root

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Stinson said:

To level the horizon.

Go to the Measure tool and draw a line that would reflect a level
edge. Go to Canvas Size and select arbitrary and it will put the
angle in so just click ok.

For perspective changes, use free transform > perspective and
adjust the end points.

Not sure if that will help you but what the heck.

--
Stinson
C2100,C-2020, D-40, PS6
http://www3.photosig.com/viewuser.php?id=64739
http://www.pbase.com/stinson

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Knox / streetkid said:

I'm curious . . .how would you have done this? Outside of the
obvious of NOT having it on a slight angle. I did go back a bit and
use the zoom as opposed to being right up on the subject to
compensate for the lens, as that was worse. How would a person
'time align' for lack of a better word the camera to pick up all 4
corners at the exact same time, thus keeping the image 100% intact
with no visual distortion? I'm sure there is a VERY simple answer
that my being new, I don't know. I was adjusting all the angles of
the tripod etc . . . then again . . maybe it's not that easy!

Click to expand...

Knox / streetkid said:

A friend asked me to take shots of some prints (28 of them), so she
could put them on ebay (piece of cake I thought) Whew I was wrong!

I learned a lesson today and finally decided I was being a n a l
and simply took the shots, but I DID learn something valuable about
distortion of image, 'time' and distance etc.

The prints are on a white background (matte), no glass or frame and
the print itself is in a large square in the middle.

I take my tripod. Go out in the sun. . . . her house is stucco so I
can't thumbtack them on the house (for a direct shot) and there is
nothing but a chair that seems to have a fairly straight back . . .
again, piece of cake I'm thinking. "I'll adjust the tripod to
compensate".

Good grief! To get the crop or the photo 'square' on all corners
and aligned with the image in the center was a pain and I never did
get them 100% right.

I ended up first compensating for the angle of the chair (or
trying) by angling the tripod . . THEN I forgot about the left
right 'phase' distance along with top bottom 'phase'. (I use the
word "phase" because that is what we call it in the studio when two
mics are picking up a sound source at slightly different times and
create a phase problem. I don't know what you call it in
photography.

I'm curious . . .how would you have done this? Outside of the
obvious of NOT having it on a slight angle. I did go back a bit and
use the zoom as opposed to being right up on the subject to
compensate for the lens, as that was worse. How would a person
'time align' for lack of a better word the camera to pick up all 4
corners at the exact same time, thus keeping the image 100% intact
with no visual distortion? I'm sure there is a VERY simple answer
that my being new, I don't know. I was adjusting all the angles of
the tripod etc . . . then again . . maybe it's not that easy!

btw . . I understand that if I went back a fair amount I could have
a better 'square' . . . but I needed to be close to get intricate
detail of the art work.

Regards,
Knox

--
Knox (w/C-5O5O) pbase supporter
http://www.pbase.com/streetkid/root

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Daniel Bell said:

Daniel Bell said:

I'm curious . . .how would you have done this? Outside of the
obvious of NOT having it on a slight angle. I did go back a bit and
use the zoom as opposed to being right up on the subject to
compensate for the lens, as that was worse. How would a person
'time align' for lack of a better word the camera to pick up all 4
corners at the exact same time, thus keeping the image 100% intact
with no visual distortion? I'm sure there is a VERY simple answer
that my being new, I don't know. I was adjusting all the angles of
the tripod etc . . . then again . . maybe it's not that easy!

Click to expand...

This whole thing is an exercise in eliminating as many variables as
possible.

This is sort of a "don't have the camera at an angle" response, but
when I was shooting slides of artwork to be submitted for juried
contests, a bubble level was the best way I found for dealing with
this (this was long before Photoshop or digital anything). The
piece to be photographed must be flat on whatever surface you're
using (assuming your floors and the surface are level...), and the
camera's film plane (read: CCD) must be absolutely level. A tripod
whose fastening mechanisms are not perfectly tight is a loser here
as is a lens that exhibits any amount of optical disortion or
chromatic abberation (unless you like fun-house colors and optical
effects .

When I did this, it was with a prime 50mm lens. Doing this with a
zoom whose focal length you can't PRECISELY control would make me
nervous (at least with digital, you could see your results as you
went and thus correct as needed). You really should be as close to
a normal perspective (whatever's "normal" for your format) as
possible. If you have no choice but to use a zoom lens, get as
close to 50mm-equivalent as possible and stay there. Try to take
the focal length out of the equation as much as possible.

I got the best color rendition when stopped down 2-3 stops from
wide open, but you'd really have to experiment with each lens to
know what's going to work the best. I'd probably think about
disabling in-camera sharpening (red-channel noise is bad if you're
aiming for color fidelity) and shoot to RAW format or TIFF if you
can (don't add any more compression artifacts to the process than
necessary; start out lossless and convert to JPEG only once, for
final posting on the web).

Lighting is a whole different can of worms. I've only done what
you're describing indoors with tungsten films, so I'm not sure
anything I think I know would apply to doing this under natural
light . The best general advice I can give is to pre-visualize as
much as you possibly can. Try to identify possible variables and
come up with strategies to eliminate them. Your brain can only
manage so much complexity at once and the automated nature of
modern cameras can make for really inconsistent results in a case
like this if you don't take as much control of the process as
possible (the camera might not guess the same way two frames in a
row...).

I hope you find some of this rambling helpful. This may not be
high-art photography, but it's a very demanding technical exercise.

Click to expand...

Psychephylax said:

The other thing that wasn't mentioned is a good tripod. I've spent
170$ on mine and boy am I happy with it.

The center column can be placed into the legs horizontally so that
I can shoot straight down. Thus, you would have had to just lay out
the prints on the table, then set up the tripod to shoot straight
down, and shoot straight down. Use an external bounce flash to
bounce off the ceiling to get even lighting.

Knox / streetkid said:

A friend asked me to take shots of some prints (28 of them), so she
could put them on ebay (piece of cake I thought) Whew I was wrong!

I learned a lesson today and finally decided I was being a n a l
and simply took the shots, but I DID learn something valuable about
distortion of image, 'time' and distance etc.

The prints are on a white background (matte), no glass or frame and
the print itself is in a large square in the middle.

I take my tripod. Go out in the sun. . . . her house is stucco so I
can't thumbtack them on the house (for a direct shot) and there is
nothing but a chair that seems to have a fairly straight back . . .
again, piece of cake I'm thinking. "I'll adjust the tripod to
compensate".

Good grief! To get the crop or the photo 'square' on all corners
and aligned with the image in the center was a pain and I never did
get them 100% right.

I ended up first compensating for the angle of the chair (or
trying) by angling the tripod . . THEN I forgot about the left
right 'phase' distance along with top bottom 'phase'. (I use the
word "phase" because that is what we call it in the studio when two
mics are picking up a sound source at slightly different times and
create a phase problem. I don't know what you call it in
photography.

I'm curious . . .how would you have done this? Outside of the
obvious of NOT having it on a slight angle. I did go back a bit and
use the zoom as opposed to being right up on the subject to
compensate for the lens, as that was worse. How would a person
'time align' for lack of a better word the camera to pick up all 4
corners at the exact same time, thus keeping the image 100% intact
with no visual distortion? I'm sure there is a VERY simple answer
that my being new, I don't know. I was adjusting all the angles of
the tripod etc . . . then again . . maybe it's not that easy!

btw . . I understand that if I went back a fair amount I could have
a better 'square' . . . but I needed to be close to get intricate
detail of the art work.

Regards,
Knox

--
Knox (w/C-5O5O) pbase supporter
http://www.pbase.com/streetkid/root

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--
http://www.pbase.com/psychephylax
Proud owner: Oly 2040Z, 2100UZ, B-300, WCON-08, OM-4, Tokina
35-105mm/3.5-4.5, Tokina 28-200mm/3.5-5.8, Vivitar 285HV

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