digital cam for dichro photos

pookie · Post by **pookie** » Thu Jul 10, 2003 9:34 pm

would like to photo dichroic pendants .need to know what digital camera would work best I'm not very photo literate.would appreciate any help.

Rob Morey · Post by **Rob Morey** » Fri Jul 11, 2003 11:28 am

I use a digital to shoot my work, however, none of it is dichro. My camera is a 3.3 megapixal. It works pretty well and I would recommend not getting anything less than that. Once you have that, then lighting is the next biggest factor. That takes a lot of experimentation. Just remember that light bounces off an object at the same angle that it hits the object, kind of like a ping-pong ball. If I were shooting jewelry, then I would have a dark, matt background. Maybe even black. I would place my lights about 45 degrees to the side and use some sort of diffuser. Finally, get a copy of Adobe Photoshop to edit the image. It is expensive, about $600, but there are legal ways to get it much cheaper and less legal ways to get it way cheap.
Here are a couple of links to my site that may help you out. The first are just images on my site and how they look when finished.

http://www.ramoreydesign.com/Life%20des ... eries.html

Here is a link to how I set up to take my photos. You do not need any special lighting fixtures with digital like you do when you are shooting standard film. So any type of light will work.
Here is the link:

http://www.ramoreydesign.com/Photosetup.html

Good luck.

Rob

rodney · Post by **rodney** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 3:40 am

if you are going to use the pics for posting to the web,,,im pretty sure that 75 dpi is the best you can get there, so i dont think you would need to get a super high res camera,,,,i use a sony mavica, that uses floppy disks for saving the pics, i like it very much,,,1000s of pics, and no problems,,,,good luck,,rodney

BonnieF · Post by **BonnieF** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:14 am

I appreciate your advice about photographing work. It really helped to see the photos of how you set it up from your website. Us visual types really learn more that way!

BonnieF · Post by **BonnieF** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 5:16 am

That should have been thanks, ROB! Typing too fast, too early in the morning!

Tony Smith · Post by **Tony Smith** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 9:24 am

Bonnie,

Any modern digital camera with more than 2 megapixels will do the job for photos that end up on the web. If they end up in a magazine, consider that they will be printed at 175 dpi so you should be able to get a decent 4x5 to 5x7 when printed. For conversion to slides, I would look at 3 megapixels and up.

I am a Canon fan and have always considered their film cameras top-notch. Their digital cameras are no different. The 4 megapixel G3 is an incredible camera and will probably be my next big purchase. In the interim, I'm plugging along just fine with a Canon A-20 2 megapixel camera.

Before you buy, look into how close the camera focuses (less than 6 inches is preferable for jewelry work).

Finally, because of the way dichroic glass reflects light, you'll have to play with the way you light your glass. Dichroic on black seems to be more difficult because you lose the reflected color of the coating if you shoot with a flash. I usually end up shooting with a reflector (white foamcore) over the glass to help reflect the light in from a different direction than the lens. You might also try hot lights (quartz) to give you more control over your lighting direction. Once you have the coating color under control, you'll need to control your reflections... and that's just practice

Tony

pookie · Post by **pookie** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 8:45 pm

thanks to paul stevenson ,rob morey,rodneyand tony.for their advice.rob what!s the legal or less legal way toget a copy of Adobie photoshop.i have to watch my budget.

Tony Smith · Post by **Tony Smith** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 9:17 pm

While Adobe Photoshop is a nice package, it is cost prohibitive for most law-abiding citizens. As an alternative, look for PaintShop Pro Version 8. It is the latest release and does just about everything that Photoshop does for under $99. You can usually find it on sale for $79.

It will take you quite a while to outgrow PaintShop.

Tony

Kitty · Post by **Kitty** » Sat Jul 12, 2003 9:23 pm

$50 thru Amazon after discount and rebate.

PaulS · Post by **PaulS** » Sun Jul 13, 2003 5:29 pm

pookie wrote:thanks to paul stevenson ,rob morey,rodneyand tony.for their advice.rob what!s the legal or less legal way toget a copy of Adobie photoshop.i have to watch my budget.

The Olympus C-1 that I have came packaged with some software on CD for fixing up your images, at least that's how the packaging described it.

Ask around for a used older version of Photoshop. Ver 6 is fine for web stuff, as I remember there is a GIF export facility.

I use Adobe ImageReady because it is designed for fixing up web-ready images.

HTH

paulajane · Post by **paulajane** » Sun Jul 13, 2003 7:31 pm

Adobe Photoshop Elements is an excellent program. It costs under $100 and for the non-graphic professional it is super. It is similar in many respects to Photoshop but doesn't go into any of the details or multiple levels that photoshop does. It also has some of the functions automated. I have used Photoshop for over 12 years now, and have taught various graphic software courses. I was glad when Elements came out because I could recommend it to people who wanted to use it for basic purposes. Sams Club carries it as well as the major computer store chains. There are also 3rd party books at Barnes and Noble for more information.

Paula

Claudia Whitten · Post by **Claudia Whitten** » Mon Jul 14, 2003 3:17 pm

Tony Smith wrote:Bonnie,

Any modern digital camera with more than 2 megapixels will do the job for photos that end up on the web. If they end up in a magazine, consider that they will be printed at 175 dpi so you should be able to get a decent 4x5 to 5x7 when printed. For conversion to slides, I would look at 3 megapixels and up.

I am a Canon fan and have always considered their film cameras top-notch. Their digital cameras are no different. The 4 megapixel G3 is an incredible camera and will probably be my next big purchase. In the interim, I'm plugging along just fine with a Canon A-20 2 megapixel camera.

Before you buy, look into how close the camera focuses (less than 6 inches is preferable for jewelry work).

Finally, because of the way dichroic glass reflects light, you'll have to play with the way you light your glass. Dichroic on black seems to be more difficult because you lose the reflected color of the coating if you shoot with a flash. I usually end up shooting with a reflector (white foamcore) over the glass to help reflect the light in from a different direction than the lens. You might also try hot lights (quartz) to give you more control over your lighting direction. Once you have the coating color under control, you'll need to control your reflections... and that's just practice

Tony

Tony,
I want to hear more about your white foamcore. What is that? And how do you set it up. Wouldn't it block the light, if it was above it. Will you explain a little more your set up with it. Where it is and where the light or light sources are. Thanks.....Claudia

dee · Post by **dee** » Mon Jul 14, 2003 11:02 pm

pookie wrote:would like to photo dichroic pendants .need to know what digital camera would work best I'm not very photo literate.would appreciate any help.

pookie, as stated by others, if you only will use it to post pics to a website, a 2 megapixel camera will be fine, check the macro feature to see how close it focuses - i bought a nikon coolpix 880 or 885 as that was supposed to have the best macro focusing available 2.5 yrs ago - but if you think you might need to take pics for ad type print, you must have a 3+ megapix camera as you will need to take photos in the TIF format.

for lighting, what i have found works well is a homemade lightbox - hubby went to lowes, bought some small dia pvc pipe and elbows to make a u shape frame, a piece of wire shelving to go accross the top - comes in handy to hang some things from - and i covered it in a translucent white material. i purches the chromalux light stands from dick blick studio and use frosted chromalux 150W halogen floods that i bought from a different website cheaper than they were offered at dick blick studios. i don't ever use a flash when photographing jewelry or glass. i also purchased a graduated white to black paper background from a photo supply store. i will take a pic of my photo area as soon as i clear the debris from around it ;P too much stuff, not enuf storage...

a good book for photographing artwork is a book by steve meltzer, How to Photograph your Crafts - the crafts report sells it, check also on amazon and barns and noble websites to see if they carry it.

D

Ron Bell · Post by **Ron Bell** » Mon Jul 14, 2003 11:32 pm

Tony Smith wrote:
If they end up in a magazine, consider that they will be printed at 175 dpi so you should be able to get a decent 4x5 to 5x7 when printed. For conversion to slides, I would look at 3 megapixels and up.

Tony

I suspect Tony is refering to 175 line screen which would be typical for a quality publication. To print at that screen one would need an image with a nominal 350dpi (the rule of thumb is the dpi should be twice the line screen).

A 3.2 megapixel camera will give you a nominal 8" x 10" at 300dpi. This also gives you the advantage of using the file for quality prints off devices like the Epson Stylus PHOTO 850 which produces photo-quality prints.

For web work I like to use 96dpi images since that is optimum for the high-res graphic adapters. Keep in mind that when saving files as jpegs from something like Photoshop, keep the quality setting as high as possible. Photoshop 5.5 and beyond will actually tell you how long the load time will be at your specified connection speed - a great feature for web work.

Tony Smith · Post by **Tony Smith** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 5:32 am

Claudia,

I photograph a lot of my small pieces on a flat surface and depending on what I'm doing with the photo, I use either white or black foamcore (which is a foam posterboard). Nothing fancy here... all of my photos are taken using the on-camera flash, but always at an angle to the glass to control the back reflection. When I'm shooting dichroic, I place another piece of foamcore vertically behind the piece (like a wall) and tip the top back toward the camera. This reflects some of the light from the flash onto the glass from the backside and gives the dichro some color (what it really does for the dichro is give a fully illuminated white area that reflects in the dichroic coating allowing you to see the color of the dichro). You'll find that if there is a dark area reflecting in the dichroic coating, that you will lose the color of the dichro completely.

I've placed a composite of two images below. The top image is of some of my dichroic nametags without a white "wall" behind them. The bottom image is with a white wall behind. You can see that the dichro is acting like a mirror and reflecting the white surface back through the lettering causing it to light up whatever color the dichro is.

I hope this helps.

Tony

Claudia Whitten · Post by **Claudia Whitten** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 10:02 am

Tony,
Thank you , yes that helps and the photos did too. I have been trying to photograph irid sandblasted work that I am doing. I get a lot of photos that look like your first set.Than some come out but not to what I am seeing. I assume that the reflection will be simular to dichro. I hope to get a digital camera this fall and I will try your set up. The best photos I have of these are ones that were shot outside with over cast sky using a digital. I have gotten into two juried shows with these inadequate photos only because they have seen my work, in person. Sometimes I think that the photos look okay to someone who doesn't know what it can really look like. Thanks again......Claudia

Tony Smith · Post by **Tony Smith** » Tue Jul 15, 2003 11:19 am

The white card, poster board or foamcore reflector ought to help you quite a bit... it provides the diffused illumination similar to an overcast sky, but with the sharpness of the electronic flash.

Good luck.

Tony

WarmGlass.com

digital cam for dichro photos

digital cam for dichro photos

Thanks, Ron

oops

thanks for the help

Re: thanks for the help

Re: digital cam for dichro photos