what do you use to take pictures of your studio?q

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foreverain4

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what kind of camera do you all use to take pics and post them here. i have a sony mavica and this thing just sucks. i dont know alot about photography, but i should be getting better results. check them out! www.therecordinghouse.com/studiopicsupdate they are so freekin grainy. any suggestions?



lynn
 
Hey Lynn,

I use a "JamCam" which is very much the bottom line of any camera line, and my pictures are terrible. But its good for "on the go" because if i drop it, I don't care. $20 :)

Your pictures are actually fine from a grain perspective, at least on my monitor. I printed one and it looked good on the laserjet too. They are dark, however that might not be a function of the camera, but the environment.

But they didn't seem to grainy to me. Maybe its because I'm used to my cruddy JamCam.

I was debating buying a used Mavica actually, because it saves to floppy - a feature I really, really, really like. No wires, software, or OS incompatibility issues to worry about.


foreverain4 said:
what kind of camera do you all use to take pics and post them here. i have a sony mavica and this thing just sucks. i dont know alot about photography, but i should be getting better results. check them out! www.therecordinghouse.com/studiopicsupdate they are so freekin grainy. any suggestions?



lynn
Click to expand...
 
yeah! that is the unit that i have. you cant beat the simplicity! they also make one that writes directly to a mini cd. those cds are outrageously expensive though. i know the pictures are dark. i thought that that is perhaps what is making the pictures grainy. i have heard that with digital cameras you need to have really good lighting. but my studio just does not look as cool with the flourecents on! :) there has got to be a way.


check out this pic

http://www.soundkitchen.com/skweb/frames/skindex-frames.html


then check out mine. :(
try not to compare the equipment! lol
 
frederic,
can you give me a link to one of your pics? maybe yours will not appear that bad to me.
 
Grainy pix.

They aren't bad foreverain4. Like you said they are dark but I would be willing to bet that the photos taken at the Sound Kitchen were done by a pro photographer for their promo kit and just scanned in (via a professional scanner) for the website. Those guys didn't spare any expense with their studio so they ain't gonna cut corners in promoting it. You got any friends that have a nice camera and some lights that want to hone their photography skills on the cheap? You're right turning on the flourescents would help only by reducing the darkness. Get some serious light going in there and the pix should come out awesome because that is a really nice looking room.
 
Flourscent lighting is generally not good for photography... you lose a lot of colors that way.

I use a halogen worklight on a pole :) Why? Because I have one :)

I've seen the mini CD one, but I still prefer the floppy one. Floppies I have a ton of. I'll riffle on e-bay eventually to find a cheap mavica.

http://www.soundkitchen.com/skweb/frames/skindex-frames.html

That looks much better :)

Sure, be happy to share grainy pictures. These were done with a 640x480 $20 "JamCam".

Normally I convert them down to less colors because they look like absolute garbage anyway. Removing colors doesn't seem to make them significantly worse to look at, but significantly smaller.

JamCam Studio Pictures
 
those are not any worse than mine, and i paid almost $600 for mine 2 years ago. i did figure something out though. i took the picture at a bigger size and resampled it in photoshop. before i resized it, i increased my lines per inch to 500 from 133. check and see if you can see the difference.



www.therecordinghouse.com/testpics
 
That certainly helped but that deep purple and black foam is killing the light. More light! More light!
 
Nice looking room. I really like the purple. The pictures came out fine on my monitor (17" KDS). I use a Canon digital camera and really like the convenience. Take a picture, download it on the computer, delete it from the camera. I have a Sony 5 megapixel camera I use at work sometimes. The quality is unbelieveable but so is the price - about $980.

DD
 
Digital cameras (and video cameras, for that matter) need a lot of light to render high resolution.

Get some light in the picture.

Set your camera to it's highest resolution.

If you can set your white balance, set it for the appropriate lighting. Do not to use flourescents if you can not white balance your camera to them.

Use a tripod, if you have one.

You will be amazed at the difference!


BTW I really like your room :D
 
thanks for the replies on the room! it was interesting cause i seen a thing on tv tonight about digital cameras. there were showing how they creat color from RGB. the cameras right now have separate squares withing each pixel to represent Red, Green, or Blue. these all exist on the same layer and there will be 20 or so (if i understand right) within a pixel. kinda like a checker board. the new cameras coming out will have 3 separate layers, one representing each color. no longer a checker board, but a smoother blend of colors. more "analog" in a sense. if i find the name of the company again, i will post a link.


lynn
 
That would be a 3 CCD camera.

I don't expect that to be cheap.

My 3 CCD video camera retails for $3800 (ouch).
 
Not sure which Mavica you're using but I have an FD-95 and get great low-light shots using the Twilight or Twilight+ modes with the camera on a tripod.

I've even shot some pretty darn good pictures down in Carlsbad Caverns using this mode.

Low light is the bane of digital cameras. That is exactly where your graininess is coming from.

Let me know which model you're using.

Also check out out: http://www.mavican.nu/phpbb/index.php

This is a great forum devoted to the Sony cameras.

Earl
 
the key is more light. A studio is a pretty dark place. You could try playing with the gamma in photoshop (use adjust curves). Have you seen those light rigs that photographers use - the umbrella things that are attached to remote flashes? That's what you need - large field difused light.
 
also, there's no point in using anything above screen resolution for web use - all you are doing is increasing file size. Check out this test - just spent 5 seconds playing with the curves. The problem being the "brighter" you get the image, the more the grain shows up...
 

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sorry I'm postig so much here - but hey, this is my forte :)

A good trick is to just reduce the image size to reduce fuzziness - as witnessed by this second test...
 

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I use the KODAK DX4330 3.1 Mega Pixels Digital Camera. Had it for about to weeks now, I'm in the process of building my home studio. When I'm all done with all the work I'll post some picture's on the board.

You guys and girls can call me Ringo.


Peace.
 
Hey Ringo...

In order to pass the audition, you gotta post some pictures BEFORE you are finished with your studio. Show us how you got around problems that cropped up, the layout, before and after... you get the idea.

Oh yeah, and Welcome to the club!!!
 
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