I would like to buy a great digital camera for closeups for use on
the computer but I don’t seem to have a spare $900 laying around. So
I’m looking for someone who has the camera to make the digital images
for me. Is it possible then to get the images into my computer for my
use even though a person at a distant location made the images using
their camera and computer? I surfed the archives awhile looking for
the answer but thought this might be quicker. Would any of you fine
Orchid people with good digital close up cameras be selling this
service out there? NET
NET If you can take the pictures yourself with a film camera you can
have Kodak put them on a CD when they�are developed.
George Hebner
ghebner@artsights.com
Hello Annette, I Have a Nikon 950 digital Camera and am now having
good success at Photographs for the web.Only a few of my photo’s on
my website were done with this camera) I offer this service to those
who use my company for casting and finishing services .I take a
digital photo of items produced for my customers so that their
product is easily identifiable to myself and my employees. This also
allows my polishers to know what is the Required “look” that the
customer wants. I am Not a Professional Photographer , soI’m enjoying
the practice:) Daniel Grandi http://www.racecarjewelry.com Model ,
mold making,casting, finishing in gold,silver bronze and pewter for
the trade.
Why don’t you just take the photos with your regular 35mm SLR and
have the film processed on a Kodak PHOTO CD. They scan your images at
several different resolutions. The HIGHEST resolution is better than
you can get with any $900 digital camera. Good 8X10 prints can be
made from this scan. The LOWEST resolution is designed especially for
Web use. There are also several other intermediate resolutions
included for other applications. The PHOTO CD costs about $17.00 and
its use is intuitive. If you are interested only in using the images
on the web, you can get a Kodak PICTURE CD for about $8-10. This
service is available at Drug Store chains, Discount Superstores and,
of course, camera stores. If you want a digital camera because they
are lots of fun to play with, that’s a whole other matter. Keep in
mind however, that digital images for Web use are the LEAST demanding
of the common uses for digital cameras. The MOST demanding
requirement for digital images is to make prints 8X10 or larger. Try
one (or both) of Kodak’s CDs. If it works for you, you’ve saved major
bucks. What can you lose?..Bob Williams
There are a couple of options you have for digitizing your images, if
you can’t find a photographer that does digital images.
-
Get your photographs taken the traditional way and send the film
to be developed on a disk. -
If you have photographs already done, you can take them to a
place like Staples or Office Max and have them scanned onto a disk.
If you had a professional photographer take the pictures, you may
need to have permission from him to duplicate the photos, I did.
You mentioned high quality in your mail, to me this means you want
high resolution. The higher the resolution, the longer it takes to
upload. For customers this can be very irritating waiting a long
time. I have done a few auctions on ebay, and they suggest using a
medium resolution. Also on ebay, the higher the resolution, the
bigger the picture. This means people have to scroll to see the
entire shot. If you are going to put your images on a web page,
remember, the quality is only as good as the computer the person has.
I bought a Sony MVC83, it has a disk I can stick right in the
computer. It takes awhile to get used to using it. It also has
three resolutions you can pick from…still cost a whopping $600.
But if you look at using a professional photographer, and you are
taking a lot of pictures, you can recoup easy. I would take my own
photographs for ebay or my web page (one day I’ll have one). I would
pay for slides to get into a show.
Carol
I have faced this same dillema recently. My solution was to take
high-quality 35mm slides, and have these converted to digital by a
local professional photoprocessing lab. I am not sure where you are,
but in most cities of which I have any knowledge, there exist
photoprocessing labs which cater to the professional. The ones in
Memphis, Tennessee, where I am located, have all added the service of
scanning slides to a digital image. This service costs, here in
Memphis, $5 to $6 (US) per slide. For an additional fee, these same
labs can, if necessary, retoruch the digital image for you. For a
limited number of images, this is far less expensive than purchasing
a camera. Check with the lab before hand to see if there is a film
they prefer. Often the scanning equipment is calibrated to a
particular emulsion type, usually, in the US, one of the Ektachrome
family of films. I used another film initially, and was quite
pleased with the slide, but not the scanned image. The Ektachrome
slide, which did not look as pleasing to my eye, scanned much better
than the first film.
Before taking my slides to the lab to be scanned, I borrowed a camera
from a friend. I found that his camera did not focus as close to
the item as I wanted, rendering the jewelry quite small in relation
to the total image. I also found that the recorded image had a
tendency to wash out in the highlights, and block up in the dark
areas. I consulted the lab about this, and they confirmed this was a
problem with the less-expensive and mid-range cameras. They also
warned against less-than-perfect optics in cameras in these ranges. A
$900 (US) digital camera is defintely in the mid-range. the cameras
they suggested to me all cost in the $3000 to $25,000 range, which is
definitely out of my price range!
Good luck! Thanks for letting me express my recent experiences.
If you use a program like PhotoShop, you can adjust the photos rather
than just use the ones that you shoot. I would think this would be just
as important with slides too.
m.
I use a Sony digital camera. all you do is put a floppy in the side
of it and take the picture. You can get within an inch or centimeter
for the other’s folks of your item. Clear great picture’s. It come’s
with a cd to install on your computor that in minutes you can touch up
alot. It takes from camera to picture a whole 30 seconds! It sells for
about $450.00 at walmart or $406.00 the internet.
Try it,
Chip Stone
I have just learned to use my Olympus 450 digital camera. It is so
easy to use, but just like any other camera, you will get some good
shots and others that stink. This camera has a close up macro image,
and it works really well. I import the photos into PhotoShop, so I can
clean them up more than what the camera can do.
I think, my opinion, is that when using a regular 35mm you have to
wait to see how bad or good the shots you took were. And, then you
have to scan them or pay lots of money to have them put on disk, Most
times only 1/2 or so of the photos are usable anyway. I find the
digital camera is a wonderful thing. I can take photos, put it on my
computer and see which photos are decent enough to keep and then
discard the others.
I paid about 450.00 for this…but that doesn’t include the extra
power cord, and my husband bought us a rechargeable battery package.
This way we can use the camera on battery, but it eats the batteries
up really fast. So, it is nice to have 12 extra rechargeable
batteries.
Anyway, I would advise a decent digital. Make sure the camera is more
than 600 X800 You need the better quality to work with.
M./
I’d just like to add to what others have already stated and I agree
with. If you already have photos or slides you can get them scanned
to jpeg format for web use. If you don’t live near a city or photo lab
and are in the US (I’m not sure if they ship internationally) you can
have your slides scanned at http://www.digital-photography.com/ They
charge under a dollar per scan and are quick about it.
There has also been some discussion on how the pictures are taken and
image size: I take my photos in a variety of ways for different
purposes. For juried pictures and advertising (group shots) I use a
35mm camera and macro lens. I then scan the images for my web site
photo gallery as jpeg images. I have recently been adding a lot of
pictures to my site straight from my digital camera (Mavica FD-88).
The thumbnails are 128x128 pixels and the large images are 640x480
pixels. This is as large as I’d like to get on a web site. For ebay
photos I try to make them around 200x200 pixels. That way it loads
quickly and is big enough to see clearly. If you’re only using the
digital images for the web you won’t need them too much larger then
these sizes. Jpeg images load much faster than tiffs and are
recommended. I also want to note that if you are planning on using
these images for prints or slides I wouldn’t recommend digital only;
the quality will not be as high as film.
Amy O’Connell
Amy O’Connell Jewelry
Don’t forget about Seattle Filmworks which will develop your film AND
scan the pictures for a very low fee. The pics are available very
quickly to download on line and/or they will send you a CD or Floppy
with the scan PLUS prints and negatives of your 35mm film. This is
the best service I’ve found.
Seattle filmworks 1-800-345-6967 http://www.filmworks.com
I have a page on my Web dedicated to camera resolution. I used a
Kodak 35mm line resolution chart which can be ordered from any camera
store, and took pictures of it with the Nikon Cool Pix 950. For Web
display, it dosent get any better. You can see the smallest
resolution lines in the macro mode, and it does quite well in the
regular mode. I left the images large, just compressed them to *.jpg
files so they would be easy to download on the web.
The normal image size is approximately 700 kb, which is way to big to
put on a web page for someone to download. I reduce the images to the
25-30 kb size using a program called ‘Thumbs Plus’ which can be bought
on the web for $79. Its one of the best cataloging programs for
pictures I’ve run across.
http://www.cerious.com/ is the maker of Thumbs Plus.
If anyone wants me to do any more tests, such as using a 35 mm camera
at the same distances, and posting the scanned in results, please
dont hesitate to ask.
-randy
http://www.rocksmyth.com
Home 214-321-6253
Work 972-714-6650
Cell 214-213-0777
Why don't you just take the photos with your regular 35mm SLR and have the film processed on a Kodak PHOTO CD.
can you get both negatives AND a CD?? I can see where you could use
both- printers to print out digital images are not cheap, and I
really don’t like the product as much as a traditional print-
Anne