[Mr. Castleman:]
Post by Monte CastlemanTIFF or RAW
files take up perhaps 5X as much space, but may be worth it if the photo is
something you care about and/or plan to edit heavily. For the serious digital
photographer, a microdrive, several large memory cards, or taking a laptop
along for picture dumping are several different options.
This is true. I have to point out that I am not a serious digital
photographer. I got the LS443 originally to photograph documents in
records offices here in Britain, and I chose it after studying the
papers I would need to "copy" using the camera and developing a series
of need-based criteria.
* In order to be able to photograph very fine typescript on postwar
loose minutes etc. so that I could read the results on a 1024 x 768
computer screen without difficulty, I calculated I needed 3.2 MP
minimum. I opted for 4 MP to give a margin of error and I have since
taken advantage of this by photographing books and periodicals (which
often have very fine type).
* My research work covers the period 1906-1972, during which British
government departments used "office foolscap." This is slightly more
oblong than A4, which itself is slightly more oblong than letter-size.
I wanted to have each unit area of written-upon paper recorded by as
many pixels as I could, so the LS443 with its 3:2 image ratio had a
strong advantage over the 4:3 ratio which was more or less standard
among its competition.
* The LS443's nearest competitor was the Nikon CoolPix 4300. The
features it had that the Kodak did not included (1) the option to vary
compression level, (2) the option to save in *.TIF rather than *.JPG,
and (3) the option to set the exposure manually. I would have
infinitely preferred to buy the CoolPix if I were getting a digital
camera for recreational purposes. However, I had to get the camera
for research, so my main concern was whether the LS443's heavy-handed
compression would make text hard to read. After some study of test
shots on the Web I discovered that image quality from the LS443 was
not far inferior to the CoolPix provided the subject was contrasty.
For typescript on white paper this is generally not a problem. I do
miss the clarity of the CoolPix when taking landscape shots, though.
$350 did seem to me rather a lot to pay for a digital camera which I
knew would be missing capabilities I considered fairly essential. But
the alternative was to try to photocopy the important documents I
needed and take notes on the rest. I felt this was a bad deal
because, even if I managed to save money by not making a copy (at a
rate of 40p per A3 page) of every single document in a 300-page file,
it would still take me a lot of time to go through all 300 pages,
identify the ones which were important and which were not, mark the
important ones up for photocopying using bookmarks, and take notes on
the rest with a consequent risk of transcription errors.
My doctoral dissertation covers some topics which have already been
written about by others and, as I have gone through their material, I
have found lots of errors which could easily have been avoided if
these other writers had been able to refer to an actual copy of the
official record OUTSIDE the records office.
Chris Marshall's site has a few examples of documents which have been
photographed for research purposes, although the pictures uploaded to
his website have actually been resampled down from the original 1632 x
2448 size:
http://www.cbrd.co.uk/histories/wartoworboys/2.shtml
Post by Monte CastlemanPost by a***@my-deja.comFor many
road pictures, "getting the sign" tends to be prioritized over
"getting a good picture," which leads to lots of shots of severely
backlit signs which can barely be read. (Very few people have learned
the trick of photographing backlit signs WITH FLASH, so that the light
bouncing off the retroreflective sheeting approximately matches
sunlight in intensity.)
I've tried this, and what usually happens is that it backfires and the sign
becomes wildly overexposed. Usually what I do is take a picture without flash,
then selectively adjust the levels of just the sign.
Sign "burn-out" is a major problem with newer types of retroreflective
sheeting. I have personally never been able to get a satisfactory
flash picture of a sign with microprismatic sheeting, and
high-intensity sheeting is pretty hit-and-miss. If the sign panel is
especially large, it becomes less bright toward the edges because the
efficiency of the retroreflective sheeting diminishes with increasing
entry angle.
But the flash trick works wonders with small signs (letters 6" tall)
using super engineer-grade, which is still the default sheeting for
rural areas in many Rocky Mountain states.
These tips help somewhat:
* If the sign "burns out," try to arrange a later shot so that the
sign almost fills the picture frame.
* Decrease exposure time using exposure compensation (generally this
will be necessary anyway to keep the background from being burnt
out--let the shadows fall where they may . . .).
Adjusting contrast and brightness on the signface alone can help, but
in extreme cases there simply isn't enough tone information to allow
the lettering to be separated from the sign background without major
speckling. Before I got the digital camera, I used this trick several
times for slide pictures of backlit signs, but nowadays I usually
reserve the digital camera for shots of this kind and try to get an
already-optimized shot in the camera before I leave the scene.
These are reasonably successful examples:
http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p5482733.html
http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p5482744.html
These are perhaps not so good, with blocked-up shadows etc.:
http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p5482761.html
http://winklers-roads.fotopic.net/p5482953.html