Photography Blog

Ziv Haparnas asked:




Sometimes you find yourself in a situation when you have to scan paper prints, negatives or slides and store them as digital photos on your computer. Although the reason for doing that can vary there are some common considerations to scanning paper prints. In this article we will go over some of them and try to make your scanning experience easier.

There are three types of prints that you might be scanning:

Paper prints: the most common, usually at sizes like 4X6 and 5X7.

Negatives: also known simply as film. This is the processed film usually 35mm from which paper prints are made.

Slides: very similar to negatives used for projecting photos on a large screen.

Scanning paper photos prints.

Photo paper prints are easy to scan. You can choose to scan them yourself at home (purchasing a scanner that can do the job is usually cheap and costs less than a $100). You can also choose to mail them (or hand them) to a professional scanning service that will scan them for you and mail you back the originals and a DVD with the digital scans (such services include www.digmypics.com, www.digitalpickle.com, www.britepix.com and many more)

There are pros and cons to both scanning at home and using a professional service. If you have a small number of photos scanning at home is easier. If you have plenty of photos using a service might be easier but you can end up spending more money.

When scanning at home consider the following:

Resolution: the resolution of a scan is measured by the number of dots per inch that the scanner can produce. Most scanners can scan at 1200 DPI or more. Usually the scanner can be set to scan at different resolutions. The higher the resolution the slower the scan and the bigger the photo file size will be. For most paper prints scanning at 300 to 600 DPI is enough but you can experiment scanning at higher resolutions if you feel it provides better results.

Speed: If you have a small number of photos speed is not an issue. If you have hundreds or more of photos scanning speed becomes important. To get fast scans you would have to scan at the lowest resolution possible that results in good enough scans – for most paper prints 300 to 600 DPI is enough.. Also if you’re going to buy a scanner check the scanning speed (usually measured in the number of scans per minute make sure that you check the speed at the DPI you’re going to use).

Photo feeding: if you only have a small number of photos this is not an issue. If you have many photos make sure that the scanner you buy allows fast and easy loading of photos. Some higher-end scanners will let you load a stack of photos and will automatically feed and scan them for you. These scanners are the right choice if you are planning on scanning hundreds or more photos.

Scanning negatives and slides

Scanning negatives and slides is harder than scanning paper prints. In most cases it is easier and maybe cheaper to use a professional scanning service (such services include www.slidescanning.com, www.myspecialphotos.com, www.pixmonix.com and many more). If you want to scan at home your standard flat scanner will not be good enough. In most cases you will need to spend money on purchasing a film/slides scanner. Those scanners are more expensive than the flat paper scanners. Negatives and slides are small high resolution sources and thus require scanning at higher DPI than paper prints. In most cases 2400DPI or higher should be used.

The considerations for scanning negatives and slides are similar to scanning paper prints. If you need to scan just a few negatives or slides speed and ease are not important but if you’re going to scan hundreds or more you should spend more money on scanners that can feed the negatives or slides automatically or can just load a roll of film and scan it.

Matt Smolsky asked:




There are quite a few photo sharing sites on the Internet these days. But just because some have millions of users, does that make them ideal for easy photo sharing?

It depends on what you want to do. If you want to show your photos to the whole world, then a site that touts open sharing is right for you. However, if you consider your photos to be private between you and your family and friends, then you’ll want to look for a site that is built for easy photo sharing, but allows you to easily restrict who can and cannot see your photos.

Easy photo sharing is more than just transferring or scanning your photos into your computer and uploading them to a sharing site. There are lots of sites that allow you to do that. The thing you need to watch out for is what happens to your photos once they’re on the photo sharing website, and does the site really feature easy photo sharing.

A brief history of easy photo sharing

The very early easy photo sharing sites appeared in the mid to late 1990s, but were mostly created to provide online print ordering. More appeared in the early part of this century, primarily to provide centralized access to photos.

At the same time, desktop photo management systems appeared. These were not Internet based, and still aren’t. They provide a way to manage photos on your computer, and sometimes have links to online storage sites.

A true easy photo sharing site will allow you to easily share your photos across the Internet with the people of your choice. Exposing all your photos for the entire world to see is not really sharing – it’s really more like a neighborhood open house for your photos and lacks the intimacy of sending a photo to a friend or relative.

Getting your photos onto an easy photo sharing site

Of course, photo sharing starts with a camera. Whether it’s a camera phone or a high-end digital Single Lens Reflex camera, you need to take the picture before you can share the picture. You may have some older prints around the house that you’d like to digitize and save to an easy photo sharing site.

With that in mind, a true easy photo sharing site will feature easy one step scanning and whole folder uploads.

With one step scanning, all you do is place your photo on your scanner and push a button. With whole folder uploads, you can upload hundreds of photos all at once, rather than browsing them in one at a time. With these two features, you can get the photos you want online as fast as possible, so you can start sharing them with the people you care about.

Free membership or paid subscription?

Many easy photo sharing sites require membership. But some will allow you to upload as many as 500 photos free, no membership required. If you have a digital camera, you likely already know that you will reach the upper limits of any free membership very quickly.

Some sites also put a limit on the maximum size of the photos you can upload. This is very inconvenient as the upload process will be stopped or paused as photos that are too large are kicked out of the process. Sites that put limits on the size of individual photos cannot be referred to as easy photo sharing sites.

Easy photo sharing means more than just sending an email

Sites that offer printing services are also convenient. Most do, and many offer roughly the same price and quality, so pay particular attention to how easy it is to order the prints, how easy it is to upload your photos, customer service, shipping options, etc. How well a site handles these services is an indication of whether or not it is an easy photo sharing site.

Also, true easy photo sharing sites will allow you to create, print and share photo albums, story books, greeting cards, calendars, and other photo gifts. These items should be easy to create, and feature high quality, both in terms of service and the finished product you receive.

flowers in the great outdoors is considered to be a pastime more than work. The relaxing feel of the outdoors in national heritage sites and parks is enjoyed by many outdoor photographers. Going on such outdoor day shoots requires some equipment especially if you’re using a digital SLR. I currently enjoy my Nikon D40, probably the most affordable digital SLR bought from Hidalgo for a mere P21, 000.00. If you want to do some flower photography, it would be a great idea to invest in a few lenses.

The cheapest lens you can get that yields great results is a 50mm prime lens with an aperture of f/1.8. A lot of photographers have dubbed this lens as the “nifty fifty” because it delivers absolutely clear photos for a price less than a hundred dollars. This lens is available for both Canon and Nikon DSLR brands with Nikon’s being slightly more expensive. The true benefit of this lens is that it takes very good portraiture, allowing your flower subject to stand out clearly while blurring the background.

If you have a little bit more money to burn I would highly recommend a macro lens. My personal lens of choice is an old inheritance – a Micro Nikon Auto f/3.5 macro lens which I’ve seen all over the Internet. It’s not being sold in stores anymore but you can probably grab one from eBay if by some twist of fate the previous owner has decided to sell.

If you’re going to go “deep” with shooting, you will definitely need a mini tripod or a monopod to deliver versatile shots. You can find pretty versatile mini tripods for less than P400.00 in some malls. But I suggest investing in more durable tripods such as the mini GorrilaPod that retails for about a thousand bucks. A monopod, on the other hand will help you get sturdy in thick situations like when inside bushes or when the area does not give you the luxury of spreading out a tripod through a wider plane.

With a variety in equipment coupled with the basics of photography, shooting flowers outdoors can be a therapeutic and rewarding experience altogether!

By: Timothy Spencer

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Canvas Dezign asked:

Are you artist/photographer? Would you like to make difference in this field? Do you want to satisfy your customer? Then, this article gives you the way to make difference in your profession. The artist should have the innovative and imagine ideas to create something differently. This type of thirst can be work out by the photos to canvas that is canvas pictures. The technique canvas let you to get the pictures as your thought. In the photographer field, the photo onto canvas gives you the new way of dimension on the photography. When you give photo to canvas, the canvas technique makes your photo something different like adding brightness, colors and sharpness etc.

Suppose assume if you are taking the photo of nature, because of bad weather, it was not like nature pictures some unwanted things added. To overcome this problem, we need to add some colors and give sharpness to picture. This task can be achieved by the technique called canvas photos. When you give photographs to canvas, you can make the picture like brighter, colorful, realistic original picture. Picture will get the high resolution and viewable format. Likewise, we can keep our ancestor photos and their art work for a lifetime, if we give these artist and photographs to canvas. It creates your dream canvas. Photo to canvas brings your dream comes true.

While sending the photographs to canvas, it has major three steps to consider:

Cropping

Retouching

Color balancing

In cropping method, the image can be cropped by various sizes and each can be sent to the customer to choose the best one. Also here, we can get the particular area alone using crop and can remove the unwanted things based on our requirements.

In retouching method, the rework on the photo will be made. Here, we can make our face to bright, dark, and colorful and etc. can add/remove the chin. The usual task to be made here is removing the date and time stamp from the digital photo.

In color balancing method, can add/remove the original color to make the picture clear, also possible to make the black and white version picture.

The other advanced methods are multiple the images and resize the children drawing etc. These types of methods are available in canvas pictures technique. When you move photo onto canvas, you can get digital photographs printed o the canvas and this is used by us instead of normal photographs. The photos, which is printed on the canvas provide a single touch to the image and can win you a lot of appreciation. Usually the photographer who wants to make their customer satisfaction and valuable photos can make efficient use of dramatic / stunning photos onto the canvas service. The canvas arts look like original arts which are in museum and exhibitions.

Normally, ancestor’s photos, family photographs and portraits are preferred to a canvas image. But if you want something innovative, then you can also get intangible photo onto canvas.