Woodgrain and Digital Photography

[nohope587]

As I wait for the drillers to finish drilling the first well I have had a chance to play around with my camera. I think I am approaching the limits of what this four year old beast is capable of.
Any tips on how to improve the shots are more than welcome.

Anyway here is the closest representation to actuality I have been able to product on this coin so far.

http://www.mycoins.us/forum/DSC05434.JPG

[triggersmob]

Great photography, Richard.

You have really captured the detail.

[Paint Your Wagon]

I am myself playing with a canon dslr 30 D at the moment
Your white balance if slightly off and you posted at 72 dpi whereas computers sees 96 dpi so you lose visual coherence because you do not match computer resolution .
I have for the moment not found out why but my camera does the same and generates 72 dpi pictures at best jpeg setting which in my opinion is useless with a good minitor you need 96 dpi
I have RAW capability but have not used that yet

[Paint Your Wagon]

I finally save my pics at 300 dpi max jpeg quality because 300 is printer quality and on screen you can go 300% bigger without any loss of detail
You would not guess but three full spectrum lights like 180 watts at 95% color factor at 6000 Kelvin were used for this pic

[nohope587]

Thanks for the tips will try changing the resolution to 96. I have very little control over the white balance. I set it before each shot but have no feature to change it in the editing software. I would love to shoot in raw but the camera has a unique file format SFR that none of my editing programs will read. At least none I have here.

[Paint Your Wagon]

Thanks for the tips will try changing the resolution to 96. I have very little control over the white balance. I set it before each shot but have no feature to change it in the editing software. I would love to shoot in raw but the camera has a unique file format SFR that none of my editing programs will read. At least none I have here.

Problems start when daylight is a significant proportion of lighting coming on the coin
So you either have to make pictures at night or with dense draperies and then the whitebalance should be allright
Or you have to override daylight by brute force like I do with three times 60 watts at 6000 K which is daylight at noon temperature
The picture you posted is jpeg format my photoshop can easily reset white balance but the problem is you got a shift on the bottom left and not on the top right
So I guess conflicting lighting is present .
I bought the book Numismatic Photography by Mark Goodman that one of our knights advised . The only surprise was he advocates a stop of like 7 to 10 whereas I prefered 12 to 16 in the past photographing running dogs . But you really need like a 150 mm lense to benefit completely from the book and I am operating a zoom 20 to 55 with a cheap screw on 3 diopters filter

[nohope587]

Resolution changed to 96dpi

[Paint Your Wagon]

Resolution changed to 96dpi

I have the impression the picture is sharper now

[triggersmob]

I would like to see both pics together, to see if you can tell the difference.

[Paint Your Wagon]

I would like to see both pics together, to see if you can tell the difference.

Very difficult because the posted picture is allread 50 wider then screen size and reducing both to screensize would automatically improve quality
What may be possible is to post half or less of each pictures side by side

[Paint Your Wagon]

Ok info
f 2.2 should be 7 at least
focal 15.3 should be 50 mm or better if possible
Iso speed 64 very strange 100 -200 - 400 are the most common and even the professionals use not less then 100 sensitivity

[Paint Your Wagon]

The interpolation in photoshop is so good only the histogram is smoother on the 96 vs the 72
Now remember with LCD screens the setting of your screen determines the color and the program the smoothness
This was not true on the old canon type deep videos . There green was green and not yellow green or blue green
I show part of the 96 and 72 side by side but because fo Photoshop I virtually see no difference ( I will try to get the histograms)

[Paint Your Wagon]

You can see there is a sublte improvement a little more smootheness and a little more information
But everything considerd with a very large format not worth the trouble ( unless you post pics on ebay the blowing up a 96 dpi gives you a lot more the a 72 )

[nohope587]

Thanks for all the tips and info Paint Your Wagon.
I am kind of limited in what I can do as I am on a drill ship and as you would expect there is a fair amount of Vibration from the engines, thruster etc. I am also fairly limited in my lighting options though I have put the call out to see if anyone onboard has a daylight bulb in their cabin that they could lend me. The Picture posted was taken using just natural light through a window. I have a light ring for my lens but forgot to bring the correct adapter ring. I have access to various LED flashlights which I will try next. I will try setting the Iso manually and the F to 7.

Thanks once again for your help.

[triggersmob]

I can't tell any difference in the two pics.

Thanks for the info PYW.
All these camera setting are to complicated for me, I just switch to macro, set it on auto and snap the pic.
They seem to come out reasonably good.

This was the last photo I took, any suggestions would be welcome..