# Simple Photo Help Tips



## DCBluesman (Jul 30, 2005)

A common theme in pen photography is that the picture is not big enough to see the detail. As you will witness by my own pictures below, I am not a great photographer. That being said, there is a trick to photo composition which will help us see you pen and should result in a more accurate critiues.  If your camera and software let you make these changes, it should help us help you.

Note: All pictures sized at 640 pixels wide and the same camera settings were used. Also, each pair of pictures is the same picture with only the cropping being different.

Traditional pose: Either a straight vertical or straight horizontal picture.







Same picture cropped tighter. 

*Image Insert:*





Same pen photographed at a 45-degree angle.

*Image Insert:*





45-degree angle with tighter cropping. 

*Image Insert:*





As you can see, my photography didn't get any better, but you sure can see the detail better.

Give this a try--and good luck!


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## ctEaglesc (Jul 30, 2005)

Hey! wasn't this on the Critiques forum?[}][]


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## 4reel (Aug 4, 2005)

When you took the picture did you shoot it at 640 X 480? I shoot mine at 5 meg and then resize to load and they are not looking good when I resize them??


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## DCBluesman (Aug 4, 2005)

Still is, Eagle.  Anything worth saying is worth repeating ad nauseum. []  Dave,  these pics were shot at 3072 x 2048 pixels, then resized to 640 pixels wide.  When necessary, I use Photoshop to adjust the quality such that I get the picture in under 90k.


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## opfoto (Aug 10, 2005)

I photograph mine at the highest resolution the camera allows and then I use Picasa to resize and crop. Works great. Only took a few minutes to figure out. As a reminder tho' don't put too many pens in 1 frame.


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## Daniel (Oct 18, 2005)

Lou,
don't mean to swell your head to much. but the tight cropped photos I woudl use as example of about as good as they get.
very good lighting. they show the highlights but they don't overpower the rest of the pen,(this is very hard to do)
the light surrounds the pen which is also very hard to get good at. the background is fantastic, and you did it with a dark subject. overall I think you are showing a supreme example of a pen photo. but that's just my taste. now just air brush out that one tiny little flaw in the barrel and you can print and mount this one on your wall.
it really is good to see photos of this quality starting to get taken by members of this group. thanks


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## Trapshooter (Oct 18, 2005)

Thanks for the advice.  These picture descriptions are worth more than a thousand words!!


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## Rifleman1776 (Oct 19, 2005)

> _Originally posted by DCBluesman_
> <br />Still is, Eagle.  Anything worth saying is worth repeating ad nauseum. []  Dave,  these pics were shot at 3072 x 2048 pixels, then resized to 640 pixels wide.  When necessary, I use Photoshop to adjust the quality such that I get the picture in under 90k.



You say you adjust the "quality"? I'm not familiar with that setting. Do you just mean the pixel count under 'resize/image/pixel dimension ?  That's what I do, sometimes several times. I find that a 640 pixel photo is always over the 90 kb limit. Usually have to cut back to about 580.


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## Old Griz (Oct 19, 2005)

Here is the link to a great piece of image optimization/compression software... ULead Smart Saver Pro
http://www.ulead.com/ssp/runme.htm

I use it all the time to get my images to the size I want without image degradation.... works like a charm.. and very user friendly..


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## BigRob777 (Oct 29, 2005)

Coach Lou,
I see you only have 11 posts, so you must be new[] I think I do pretty much the same thing you do, except that I don't do the diagonal pic yet.  That'll be next for me.  BTW, nice pen.  Oh yeah, I took your advice and bought an oval skew.  I can't wait to use it.
Rob


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