How should I prepare photos for the gallery?

[headkaze]

I have some handhelds; GBA, GBA SP, DS, DS Lite & PSP and I plan on buying more handhelds in the future because I want to collect them. I gave away a Zodiac 2 and WonderSwan Color which I regret a bit because they would have been nice to add to my collection.

Anyway how should I take photo's of these consoles? I'm not sure if my camera do anything other than jpeg. And do you want the background removed?

[flash]

That would be good if you could. Luckily, I have a Zodiac 2 that I will Upload soon.

The best way to take them is against something white, a few sheets of white paper will do a treat.

(If you are using a Digital SLR)
Set the camera to an iso of 100 or 200 and the shutter speed to around 60-125th's of a second. The aperture can be a problem as the smaller (higher number) the less light that can get to the ccd. But, the smaller the aperture, the wider the focal range.
So, an aperture of around 11 is a good one if you have good light. Take pictures near a window. Flash can be used for infill if the camera is fairly high to the subject.
Zoom in as much as you can to maximise the resolution.

I would not worry too much about cutting them out, but it is not usually too bad a task as there as so many neat edges.

The only other thing I do is a lot of retouching in photoshop to remove any marks or blemishes. This can take a while

But, If you just wanna upload pictures as they are taken - please do. You could just shove them on the ftp, or in the special secret gallery

Thanks for your support as always HK

[headkaze]

I don't think zooming in would effect the resolution. My camera is quite good at taking close up pictures but I would think being zoomed out would make for a better picture? You sound like you know more about photography than I do though.

Can you take a look at my Amiga 1200 upload? I removed the background and ran an "Auto Levels" in Photoshop. I think it came out pretty good but it might not be up to your standards? 

My dad has a DSLR if you want I could borrow it and take a shot of the Amiga again as well as all my handhelds?

[flash]

DSLR's do give you a better picture overal, they also tend to be better at handling perspective distortion.

When I said "zoom in", i meant with optical zoom so that the image filled the frame to enable a picture of a larger resolution.

Borrowing a Digital SLR would be a great idea if you ever get round to doing some of your handhelds.

I will have a look at the Amiga shot in a little while (just eating me jacket spud <yum>)..

Lighting is normally something that causes problems. You can see that with the earlier photos I originally posted at GameEx. They where taken while in the loft with flash and a single flouresent tube. The saturn, magnavox etc.

[techno_wiz_oz]

Lighting is a real issue for me I always find. This is coming from a guy that bought an A1000...DigiView...Panasonic B/W hires video camera etc so it's always been a problem for digital photography even before digital cameras were invented   

I'm no expert though, but the only time the digitised pictures came up trumps were on very bright days and using very thick net curtains over the window to give a nice even diffuse light.

The thing that always strikes me is that as the technology improves so amazingly I still get Deja-vu from the Amiga days like pulling in 250 frames from battle scenes in BSG and using them as anim brushes on Dpaint III *sigh* The lessons learned about lighting subjects for Digi-View and importing video at quadruple the resolution you need etc are all still true today.

[flash]

What always confuses me is that a digital video camara can take video that show the correct lighting and a digital camera results in an under exposed image?
How can one that it without flash and the other needs flash and 10 times the amout of light to reproduce the subject?