Re: Lead Painters' League Photography

[Westfalia Chris]

Aha. It's starting to become clearer... So it is right to say that, purely for on screen viewing purposes, if you have reduced your image to, say, 800 x 800 pixels, then then resolution is neither here nor there - unless you wanted people to be able to print a higher quality image from your on screen image?

So viewing an 800 x 800 pixel image on screen (at 100% of its size in pixels), I shouldn't be able to discern any difference if the resolution is 300 dpi or 96 dpi. Correct?

(Sorry, Chris - I'm an artiste darling, not a physicist  )

That is exactly my point. There should not be any difference if you look at two images of the same size, but with different resolution.

Allow me to illustrate, first with a simple graphic with large areas of similar colours. Both are saved at 100% quality, and have the same file size of ~46kb. Left is 96dpi, right is 300dpi.



Next a photo, which is bigger (107kb) due to the higher variety of pixel colours. Again, 96 on the left, 300 on the right.

[Captain Blood]

Excellent! Thanks Chris.

So there's no real reason for LPL entrants to save their images at higher resolutions, thus pushing file sizes up to 350Mb - 450Mb, when a lower res image coming in at 100Mb or so, will give exactly the same effect on screen.

 

[Heldrak]

While we're chatting so pleasantly, here's another question -

Are there initial camera settings that we should be looking at with an eye towards eventual compression of the photograph for website display?

In my own case, since I cut my teeth on photographs of bare metal figures for eBay sales (where you want to expose any flaws so that customers know what they will be getting), I find that when I take pictures of painted figures, they tend to be at too high a level of magnification, and this is further exacerbated by the cropping one does to get a good composition.

Let's take a look at my recent photo of the conversion of The Spirit that I did. This photo was taken with overhead room lighting, plus two extension lamps with regular (yellow/white) bulbs. The white balance isn't  problem because I set it manually with a piece of white card under room lighting conditions prior to taking the photograph. The picture was taken in Macro mode with a tripod.



The focus isn't a problem because I manually set the camera on a 2 second delay for the exposure (thus no body shakes).

Once the picture was taken, I loaded it onto my computer and sharpened it and cropped it and adjusted the brightness using the iPhoto application on my Macintosh.

While the result is a decent photograph, the figure comes in larger than it would appear to the naked eye with the resultant magnification of flaws, brush marks, etc. Is there some kind of camera setting that I'm missing that would render the figure more as it would appear in scale to the naked eye?

[Westfalia Chris]

That is because most cameras take their pics at a comparatively low resolution (all of mine took 72dpi), but in huge pixel dimensions (3000+ pixels in either dimension) to produce an image that has enough detail to print to high quality on photo paper. You will need to resize the image to a pixel size that is closer to actual size, so ca. 150 pixels figure height on a 96dpi screen - that is a bit bigger than a 28mm figure would be on 100%, but not so big as to be unforgiving on the details.

[Silent Invader]

Both fascinating and helpful, thanks Chris.

I'm sure it must show in my image quality but I keep this photography business as simple as I can......

....illuminate with an LED lamp shielded with a mask of baking parchment, take a bunch of photos using the camera's auto macro function, upload resulting JPEGS to pc then open them in MS Paint, then shrink and cut/paste the bits of the images that I want to use into a new (blank) 800x800 image file.

The camera is nothing special.... 6.0 megapixels pocket snapshot holiday photo jobby..... less than £100 I think about 4 years ago.

[Bugsda]

You jest, comrade. You are past master of the crisp pic.

Really? D'ya reckon ? I think mine are ok for punting figures on ebay but I much prefer the big cinamatic epics like you, Frank, Hammers, Grimm and all the big scenery maestros knock out. But thanks for the gee up Captain 

Thanks Westphalia Chris, I didn't understand above half but it's a start 

[Westfalia Chris]

Thanks Westphalia Chris, I didn't understand above half but it's a start 

Glad to help and to be able to make some contribution to the LPL this season even if I could not get myself in the mood to actually participate.

[SgtLooney]

I put my camera on "auto" and hope for the best...

This is my first participation to the LPL and thus the first time I had to take "good" pictures of my models. I must say I did under estimated it a bit 

For my past 2 entries, which where spaceships, I took pictures outside (in the sun and in the shade) and inside on full auto and blasted away. After the digital carnage I searched for the best result. So I'm glad to find all afor mentioned tips, I'll try to use them.

[Orctrader]

...While the result is a decent photograph, the figure comes in larger than it would appear to the naked eye with the resultant magnification of flaws, brush marks, etc. Is there some kind of camera setting that I'm missing that would render the figure more as it would appear in scale to the naked eye?

If I understand you correctly, the issue is simply that your photo is too big.  800 wide is ideal for groups of figures.  200-300 is for single image of a single figure.  I usually go for 250.  (Or have I misunderstood your point?   )

[Heldrak]

Thanks, OT.

You're talking about reducing the size/pixel count after the fact, yes? One doesn't reduce the pixel count via some kind of camera setting?

[phreedh]

Is there some kind of camera setting that I'm missing that would render the figure more as it would appear in scale to the naked eye?

No. Size on screen is completely dependat on screen size and screen resolution. An 800 x 600 pixel photo is a different "displayed" size (in cm or inches of screen real estate) on a high resolution 17" laptop compared to a 50" hd ready tv.

On a general note:
DPI has nothing to do with file size or image resolution. The only thing DPI regulates is printing behaviour. If you have a 72 dpi photo of 100 x 100 pixels and resave it as 144 dpi, two things can happen. Either the image resolution is doubled to 200 x 200 (resampled), or the image resolution is maintained but the photo will print at half size compared to 72 dpi.

You can raise the dpi to 30000 if you wish, it won't change the file size unless the image is resampled.

[Orctrader]

Thanks, OT.

You're talking about reducing the size/pixel count after the fact, yes? One doesn't reduce the pixel count via some kind of camera setting?

No.  You want the camera to work at a high mp - within reason.  I have a 10 mp Camera but use a 3 mp setting for Macro photos.

Then, in photoshop elements I...

Crop.
"Quick Fix"  (Not always - if the camera settings are "right" it shouldn't need Photoshopping.)
Resize  (Reduces pixel size)
Save for Web  (Reduces file size.)
Upload to Photobucket and/or upload to my Website.

[valleyboy]

Its late here and I've just tried to assimilate the above
This is still like rocket science to a thicko like me

I'm in the Ray group, auto, when its sunny, lots of walking back and forth, lots of fiddling with the zoom, hundreds of pics mostly out of focus and loads of breath holding whilst balancing the camera with its tiny tripod on my knee or chest or......

[Blackwolf]

Well....re-entered my third round (cheers Heldrak ),not entirely happy with it,and I don't care I'm on a steep learning curve,the LPL is mean't to be fun. No more camera for 24 hours at least
  Something I did learn is don't fiddle around with your settings too much,my camera is an old banger SLR and requires more knowledge than I shall ever have,thank god for default settings.......Should have taught myself  BEFORE LPL 5,but then I'm a git 

[Heldrak]

No.  You want the camera to work at a high mp - within reason.  I have a 10 mp Camera but use a 3 mp setting for Macro photos.

Then, in photoshop elements I...

Crop.
"Quick Fix"  (Not always - if the camera settings are "right" it shouldn't need Photoshopping.)
Resize  (Reduces pixel size)
Save for Web  (Reduces file size.)
Upload to Photobucket and/or upload to my Website.

Thanks OT. My brain was having a hard time differentiating between pixel size and file size. I'll have to warm up my Photoshop and monkey with it to see if I can get a decent result.