Denny I was not speaking of taking pics from library books. And Yes
libraries often have soft horrible lighting. I never use a flash to
take pics of any documents. And my home scanner which is 12 yrs old
will never beat my Nikon! I know a tripod is nice but I am not going
to take that to any library. If I cannot take a pic there, then their
copier will have to do. Yes you will have shake if your camera does not
have any anti-shake feature or you fail to keep your elbows tucked into
your ribs and hold the camera with both hands. But again my Nikon does
a super job. And if you have good photo editing software you will be
surprised how you can overcome moderate distortion. I know.....I have
done so. If you are taking a picture from a book in a library with a
camera you will always have distortion no matter what you do to stop
it. There will always be some. And when it comes to color
slides.......better to use a slide / negative scanner than take a
picture. Well Denny we all can have our own opinions.
Kathy
On 9/10/2011 8:20 PM, Denny Shirer wrote:
Kathy,
If you are taking a picture of a page or image with a camera, you have
to have the camera on a stand. Even shooting pictures on a wall will
have better results with a tripod. I often do this without a stand when
I am in a hurry at the library and to save money at the copier but your
hand is always going to introduce some motion blurring unless you have a
very expensive camera with an extremely fast aperture. Even setting the
camera on a few books will help. There are very inexpensive desk stands
but they are not meant to be used to shoot straight down at a page. If
you shoot at an angle the page will be distorted. If you have the room
to set up a tripod next to the table you should be able to set the
camera high enough to be able to shoot straight down but lighting then
becomes a factor and flashes often don't work well for shooting pictures
or text. Scanning will always shoot straight on with no shaking and no
lighting issues but cheap scanners do take longer. Fast and expensive
versus cheap and slow. Both will work but obviously money is an issue
for many of us so learning how to use the cheap stuff and get the best
results is always a plus.
If you are doing this stuff at home then you can setup a tripod with
some indirect lighting and get very good results shooting both pictures
and text and if shooting multiple pages from a book you can do it very
fast. This can also be used to shoot images on a screen from slides but
here we are more concerned from shooting images most likely from books
at the library. I have used a tripod at the library and have gotten a
few strange looks but never had a problem but lighting has always been
an issue. If you can prop the book up and shoot it straight on using a
small desk stand for the camera, lighting will usually be much better
but it depends on the library and how their desks and lighting is set
up. People in the library are going to be bothered by constant flash
shots so shooting without a flash is best (museum mode). It will also
cut down on glare from the page as many images in books are on glossy
paper and will reflect the flash and cause problems.
Scanning will always end up with the best quality image as speed and
lighting are constant. While you may be happy with the results from your
camera, try comparing that image to the same image scanned at the same
resolution. The scanner will win every time unless your scanner is cheap
and the camera isn't! There should be a way to get acceptable images
using whatever equipment you have. There is even some imaging software
that helps get rid of shakes and motion blurring cause from hand held
shots. The problem with scanning books is always page bends and shooting
with a camera is not going to help that. Professional book scans are
always done with the binding removed so the page can lay flat but
libraries frown on removing the binder. Sometimes you can find books
that are scheduled to be rebound and I have on occasion had the
opportunity to remove the binding and scan it with the librarians
blessing right before it is sent to be rebound but that is a very
special occasion and you may never have that opportunity.
Just do the best you can with what you got. Your not getting paid for
this so whatever you do is going to be acceptable by those standards.
Denny Shirer - drdx(a)neo.rr.com - Canton, OH
Shirer Family Genealogy -
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mysong
Muskingum County, OHGenWeb -
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohmuskin/
On 9/10/2011 7:10 PM, Kathy Gies wrote:
> This is great that this topic came up on the list. And the suggestions
> from Dale and Denny have been super.
> I want to add another comment here. Trying to scan at any resolution
> greater than 300 will slow the scanner to a crawl.
> If you can take a digital picture of the photo you want to post, that will
> result in a much better quality picture. I use a Nikon 7x Coolpix
> camera and forget scanning pictures
> at all costs if possible. I set the camera to its highest resolution,
> make sure it is in museum mode with the flash turned off,
> and take a photo of the original picture. You will have true color
> for one thing.
> Then download it to your computer and resize it for the web with photo
> editing software.
> I use Corel Paint Shop Pro and _resize the pixels_ and not the print
> size because it is going on the web.
> Just my 2 cents worth.
>
> Kathy Gies
> CC- Lorain, Putnam, VanWert, Carroll and Williams counties.
>
>
>
> On 9/10/2011 9:24 AM, Denny Shirer wrote:
>
>> Cynthia,
>>
>> I wanted to jump in on this earlier but you got some good suggestions.
>> The most important thing is to make sure the image has enough resolution
>> when it is either scanned or shot. Many scanner programs default to a
>> low resolution which may be fine for graphics and text but images of
>> people and places suffer. Remember you can always reduce an image and
>> retain some resolution but you cannot do the reverse. An image shot or
>> scanned at low resolution may look fine when it is at it's original size
>> but blowing it up will only make it grainier. I always scan at 300dpi
>> and save at a size that is compatible with an average browser window
>> which was suggested to be 800x600 or you can always force the screen
>> size in the HTML code to be whatever width or height you want as long as
>> the image is not smaller than that value to begin with. Higher
>> resolution usually means a larger file and slower load time depending on
>> your connection speed but the values I suggest should not be a problem.
>>
>> You may also play with different file formats. Not all are created
>> equal. GIF and JPG have been around forever and have their uses but most
>> modern browsers can use the PNG format and that has advantages over the
>> other two. Like GIFs they can reproduce a transparent background color
>> but they also load much faster than the other two. If you want to keep
>> your site compatible with very very old browsers, use GIF or JPG but PNG
>> is a much better format, especially for graphics. So much so that I have
>> stopped using thumbnail images on my commercial site and just reduce the
>> original image. It's a lot less maintenance.
>>
>> Good luck!
>>
>> Denny Shirer - drdx(a)neo.rr.com - Canton, OH
>> Shirer Family Genealogy -
>>
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.com/~mysong
>> Muskingum County, OHGenWeb -
http://www.rootsweb.com/~ohmuskin/
>>
>>
>> On 9/9/2011 11:48 PM, Cynthia Turk wrote:
>>
>>
>>> Hi,
>>>
>>> I think I got it, and I have learned some things, too. The city
>>> hall is still a bit strange, but I can live with it. Thanks for all your
>>> help!!!
>>> Genially,
>>> Cynthia
>>>
>>> On Fri, 09 Sep 2011 23:32:42 -0400 Dale Grimm<dale(a)kbanet.com>
writes:
>>>
>>>
>>>> My e-mail program must have played tricks on me.
>>>>
>>>> Here's the correct message.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> When you click on the image, it looks great. Your thumbnails need
>>>> resized, too.
>>>>
>>>> Take the first one. You have
>>>>
>>>> <a href="pics/FrontCourtHouseSueB.jpg"><img
>>>>
src="pics/FrontCourtHouseSueB.jpg"align="middle"height="95"alt="Built
>>>> 1921"></a></td>
>>>>
>>>> If you resize it again to a 95px height and name it
>>>> FrontCourtHouseSueB-thumb.jpg and use this code
>>>>
>>>> <a href="pics/FrontCourtHouseSueB.jpg"><img
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
src="pics/FrontCourtHouseSueB-thumb.jpg"align="middle"height="95"alt="Bui
>>> lt
>>>
>>>
>>>> 1921"></a></td>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> As you have it now, the browser is still resizing the thumbnail pics
>>>> on
>>>> the front page.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Dale
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>> ____________________________________________________________
>>> Groupon™ Official Site
>>> 1 ridiculously huge coupon a day. Get 50-90% off your city's best!
>>>
http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL3141/4e6ae3ce7ebf21532m02vuc
>>>
>>> -------------------------------
>>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to
OHGEN-request(a)rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the
subject and the body of the message
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> -------------------------------
>> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to OHGEN-request(a)rootsweb.com
with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the
message
>>
>>
> -------------------------------
> To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to OHGEN-request(a)rootsweb.com with
the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the
message
>
>
-------------------------------
To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to OHGEN-request(a)rootsweb.com with the
word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message