tripod,
lean
I wonder how much digital cameras behave like old film cams. Mine (not a DSLR) probably doesn't have an adjustable iris, so depth of field is probably fixed. To get more dof, I'd back off distance and suffer more blur from shake but less barrel distortion. More light does reduce exposure time (to a point?) so that lets me get farther away, or get less shake blur if I don't change the distance.
Luckily, PC boards are mostly flat.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com http://www.highlandtechnology.com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
I have several Nikon DSLRs and they very much behave like the film cameras. Even have ISO ratings that match up with the older studio strobe lights.
The major plus is that you can check each shot immediately, unlike film. I have a D700 that has a sensor the same size as the 36x24 mm format of film. It's funny when I can take a lens from an old Nikon F and mount it on the digital camera. There are so many lenses to choose from, most any thing you want to photograph can be done.
Cannon of course makes the same fine digital cameras and which ever one you initially start out with will tend to lock you into that vendor. If you are patient, some good deals can be had on ebay.
tripod,
lean
You have a good point. Cheap digitals are probably closer to "Brownie" cameras; the only exposure control is the "shutter" speed. DSLRs obviously have control over both the shutter speed and iris. Backing off gets you more "depth of field", too. Bigger pixels, though.
I just mentioned it because I thought I noticed a difference in focus across the board, though looking again, it might just be differences in the silkscreen.
tripod,
can't lean
Cams have lots of pixels lately. Even the cheap ones are 12 or 16M. It's silly, since lens quality and shake make most of those pixels unusable.
That board has terrible silk.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com http://www.highlandtechnology.com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
That's what tripods are for. Studio TV cameras were mounted on wheeled 'Pedestals' that weight several hundred pounds to reduce vibration during movement. The lighter the camera, the more sensitive they are to vibration. Newer, quality digital cameras use 'Electronic stabilization' but a remote trigger or timer still gives the clearest shots.
Yes, the self timer is very useful for that. Some can be set for two seconds or so. That give the camera a bit of time to stop vibrating when you let go of it after pushing the shutter button.
Tripods are really necessary for the sharpest images.
There is a tripod that does just that, the Benbo (for bent bolt). I have one, and it works quite well. Bought it at least ten years ago.
Joe Gwinn
Here's my approach, just use the tripod I have, unextended...
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
If you have lots of light, the tripod is less important. Or you can trade off depth of field for exposure time by stopping the lens down*.
More light is almost always better.
I have a cheapie camcorder that has active image stabilization using a moving mirror or prism. When the power is off, the optics rattle. You can take decent videos in quite low light situations, mostly I guess because there are not very many pixels in a video image and your eyes do a low-pass filter reducing the noise by combining dozens of frames.
It's pretty compute-intensive if you have a whole whack of high-resolution camera-RAW images to process.
Assuming the camera has that option. Most today (cell phones) don't have an iris.
You can (almost) always throw it away.
Low pass in both the temporal (noise and motion) and spatial (grain/pixel size). Look at a still picture taken from even a 70mm movie. Yech.
Late at night, by candle light, John Larkin penned this immortal opus:
A polarizing filter over the lens might help getting rid of excessive reflections. Vary the illumination and photo angle while adjusting the filter.
The trick is to take a lot of mostly bad photos and choose the least bad. Digital photography is cheap.
-YD.
-- Remove HAT if replying by mail.
Yup. I did that in college, even with film. I went through about 20,
36exp. rolls a week (100'). Fortunately, it was mostly B&W (my preferred medium, anyway) and I only had to pay for film and any paper I used.Digital photography is boring, though. Snapshots, really.
take
OK i will derez one and post it in a.b.s.e, it is beautiful printed 8 by
10 and larger than life. Now i gotta find it.?-)
that you
Is that what you meant in your reply to me? I misread it as any old digital photograph. All of my pictures of electronics are film, i would have to find it then scan it. I'll just post one really good digital camera photo i took (best of only 5, and damn lucky). In general you get from any task about what you put into it.
?-)
It actually varies quite a bit. Moreover point and shoot digitals are a lot more like film point and shoot (old Kodak brownie cameras) than file SLR. And better DSLR is a lot more like film SLR than point and shoot. Then again optics is optics, and that part was somewhat interchangeable for higher grade SLR types (not so much any more). There is normally much more shutter delay in digitals, due to autofocus, red-eye reduction flash, and many other changes. Of course if you don't mind eating battery power top of the line DSLRs have a continuous autofocus capability, which reduces shutter delay. Late model film SLRs also had group shoot capability (three to five shots in about half a second) though they couldn't also vary f-stop or shutter speed like DSLRs can. The high grade DLSRs have a full optical thru-the-lens view for accurate focus. Cheap P&S digital cameras often do not have decent focus at all. All said and done, use decent tools.
?-)
you
You made a point of telling me why I can't photograph well. So you didn't like something about that shot. Shoot and post something yourself. Ditto for JT.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
you
Larkin is so narcissistic he has memory loss. I've posted a number of photos here. What a dork Larkin is. ...Jim Thompson
--
| James E.Thompson, CTO | mens |
| Analog Innovations, Inc. | et |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus |
| Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | |
| Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com | 1962 |
I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.
Yabbut consider, i have a very nice laptop which would come close to qualifying as a baby supercomputer 20 years ago. I mean no kidding, 4
64-bit integer/fp units, producing a much as 10 gflops, 8GB ram, 1 TB disk. 21 years ago i was a user on a 3090 with about equivalent resources and different capability and it was considered a baby super at the time. Oh and the laptop costs about 1/10,000 as much.?-)
you
We're talking about photos of electronics, not schmaltzy outdoor barbeques.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
Irfanview's sharpen algorithm is pretty good. I don't use photoshop, but some people here do, and they can do all sorts of tricks, like geometry corrections.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology, Inc jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com http://www.highlandtechnology.com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom laser drivers and controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME thermocouple, LVDT, synchro acquisition and simulation
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.