Posts Tagged ‘Photography’

FX Image Recovery Offers Special Deals and Savings on Digital Photography Recovery

Santa Monica, CA (Vocus/PRWEB) March 31, 2011

FX Image Recovery – specialists in digital image and video data recovery – today announces new deals and services for customized digital image recovery services.

?When a camera drops or a memory card fails, many people assume their pictures are lost. Especially people who are not technically savvy or interested in spending their time learning recovery software. Now FX Image Recovery gives them a real option. Our mission: To recover digital image and video data as quickly and cost efficiently as possible,? said Warren Hoppe, Founder and Developer of FX Image Recovery?s proprietary software. ?FX Image Recovery is so confident we can recover your photos that we offer a No-Recovery No-Cost guarantee. Byte by byte, FX Image Recovery delivers.?

FX Image Recovery uses its custom-developed software and a wide range of commercial, open-source tools to recover and reconstruct lost, deleted and even corrupted image and video files from all types of digital camera memory devices. ?Whether your image or video loss is the result of mechanical or electrical failure, human error, system malfunctions, virus activity or file corruption, FX Image Recovery has the technical expertise and resources to recover your most precious digital moments,? said Hoppe. ?If your memory card is damaged, give us the opportunity to save your pictures for you.?

To learn more about FX Image Recovery services, visit http://www.fximagerecovery.com.

ABOUT FX IMAGE RECOVERY:

FX Image Recovery specialists have years of experience providing technical support and forensic data recovery services to state and federal law enforcement, the Department of Defense and agencies of the Intelligence Community. Whether your image or video loss is the result of mechanical or electrical failure, human error, system malfunctions, virus activity or file corruption, FX Image Recovery has the technical expertise and resources to recover your most precious digital moments.

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How to build a lazy susan turntable for 360 degree product photography

360 degree product photography is a so delicate and involved topic because products come in so many shapes and sizes. Some may be very reflective, some may have dimensions that will prevent you from simply dropping them on a turntable, and some may have features that can be only highlighted when shot from a specific angle while hanging from the top and with a certain lighting setup.

The more constraints you have in your 360 photography setup the less options you get at your disposal for creating smooth 360 product views. It’s also very important to be able to quickly assess how your product appear from different angles with a given setup before you start on the actual production of 360 product images.

So before you go ahead and spend your hard earned money on a computerized equipment (which is invaluable if you do this commercially), here’s a simple guide for building a DIY turntable that will likely solve some of your product photography needs. The good news? It will only cost you a trip to a hardware store (Ace Hardware or similar), and an hour of your time to get it all assembled together!

What you need:

2 x 23″ disks of round plywood –
1 x 12″ Lazy Susan Bearing –
1 sheet of white paper enough to cover the top of plywood disks

So the turn table will be built using two disks of round plywood and a lazy susan bearing attached between the disks to provide a smooth and steady movement. The bearing is tough enough to deal with weights of up to 400-500 lb or even 1000 lb depending on a brand, so the weak link is the plywood. If you go with Shepherd’s bearing, they come with pretty good assembly instructions. The key is to find and mark the center on the plywood disks. This is pretty simple as long as the disks are perfect circles:

First, you will need to find something that has a 90 degree corner like a piece of a white paper sheet. Place the right-angle corner of the sheet at any point on the edge of the plywood disk and mark the other two points where it crosses the edges on the plywood. Then draw a straight line between the two marks and connect the marks with a straight line. Now repeat the same procedure using another point on the plywood. The intersection between the two lines is the center of the disk.

The rest of the assembly is pretty straightforward – just follow instructions on the bearing package!

Now that the major work is done, you need to decide how many frames your 360 product views will be comprised of. Usually, 20 frames per view gives a nice balance between the total size of the images/download speed and the smoothness of your product rotations. Check-out these sample 360 product views to see if 20-frame 360 animations will work for you:

Sample 360 product viewer 1
Sample 360 product viewer 2
Sample 360 product viewer 3

So to get 20 product shots, the turntable should be able to rotate in 18 degree increments. The key is to mark the top plywood disk in such way that you can easily identify the increments. One approach is to put numbered marks on the side of the disk. Since you already have found the center on the top disk, creating the 18-degree marks is pretty simple with a protractor.

The final step is to attach a piece of white paper on the top of the plywood disk where you will be placing your products and put a measuring mark on the bottom plywood base. Now put your camera on, align it with the measuring mark on the bottom and the center of the rotation, then place your product on the table and you are good to go.

Happy 360 Product Photography!

Creating An Interesting Photography Back Drop

Most people have had their picture taken before a photography back drop. School pictures are inevitably taken in front of a photography back drop that might eventually look dated. Environment kids in front of an image of a laser grid or mod blobs might seem good at first, however more classic backgrounds usually age better.

Everyone items photos of kids taken in front of a good ersatz fireplace, castle, or even forest. These backgrounds never go out of style. However, if you want a nice portrait of someone, think about a DIY photography back drop instead of plain grey vinyl.

Home Portraiture

These days with easy to use digital cameras and software to manipulate gentle and shadow, it is not completely necessary to visit an expert photographer to get a good portrait of someone. Which means this makes for more creative ways to compose photos.

Portraits from the 19th century often have sophisticated backgrounds, perhaps because obtaining a photo taken was a much more unique experience back then. The subjects pose on elegant sofas, lean on fancy tables and may have any tableau in the back again. Take inspiration from these aged photos, and set up your personal photography back drop with whatever you like.

The proper place to start is, in fact, with the photography’s back drop. There are plenty of eye-catching vertical surfaces that will make a great background to a family portrait. Look first to the walls of your house, or even your friends’ houses. Inflict of them have an fascinating paint job? How about at local historic houses? Do not neglect the outsides of buildings too, like a weathered barn or city prevent covered with a mural. Always look for a history without too much fine detail that sticks close to 1 hue.

Artists realize that the same thing looks different under different light. A place appears different under afternoon sun and sunset. Florescent and incandescent lights illuminate a topic differently. Try letting a number of lights shine on your back drop. Outdoors, the light at dawn and dusk are usually most flattering for pictures.

Once you have found a photography back decrease and gotten permission to make use of it if necessary, the rest is easy: picking add-ons and clothes for the subject. The clothes and background should contrast. Accessories are not strictly necessary, especially if you are earning a facial portrait. But consider bringing in an object that is important to the photo’s subject and have all of them pose with it. It may make your photos very personalized, distinctive, and memorable.

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DIY Product Photography

~Photography for Small Business~

– DIY product photography

in the process of being refined from my blog – check back in the weeks ahead 

If you have a small business that sells small goods online you’re probably keen for an affordable way to create photos of your products. It’s also quite likely that you want to be able to create photos that look like they are floating on the page/don’t have a background behind them.

You probably think that this sort of thing is quite expensive and requires a professional photographer with a special camera. 

You are wrong.

You can do this yourself for little or no expense. 

I’ll first detail how you can do this then, for those that are interested, I’ll go through why you can do this. 

The How: 

Materials:
– The product(s) you want to photograph
– a digital camera of reasonable quality (i.e. probably not the one on your cellphone)
– a window or similar light source
– material that is a different colour to the product you want to photograph OR a lot of free time. Blue, birght green, white, or black material are common options. You will need enough to create a floor underneath and fabric wall behind your product(s)
– photo editing software such as photoshop (expensive) or gimp (free)
– a way to resize the photos you will take

Procedure:
1) Lay your coloured material in front of your light source and clip it to something tall to create the wall. If possible do this on a table in front of a window. Ensure that the material has as few wrinkles in it as possible. For smaller objects you could drape the fabric over a chair, eventually placing the object on the seat of the chair.
2) Place your product on the material. You may like to place it on a box to raise it off the material
– The box will need to be the same colour as the material, placed under the material, or be hidden by the object itself.
3) Take a photo using your digital camera. You will probably want to use the highest optical zoom you have available to avoid image distortion. DO NOT USE DIGITAL ZOOM. Avoid using the flash.

The no flash setting on your camera probably looks like a jagged arrow with a circle around it and a cross going through it.

4) Transfer the files to your computer and open them in your editing software
5) Using the selection tool click on the background colour. Keep selecting it until it is all selected.
6) Hit delete
7) If there is any background left return to step 5
Either save this as it is or add a plain background behind it then save.
9) Resize to fit the requirements of your website

Why don’t I need professional equipment for this?
The key reason you don’t need amazing equipment for this is that web images don’t need to be very high resolution. As such differences in image quality between professional and non-professional equipment become less noticeable. 
In fact low resolution images are ideal for web use as they load more quickly and typical screen resolutions won’t show the difference between high and low resolution files. 

Why would I want a professional to do this for me?
First, it will save you time and effort. Secondly, and more importantly, what I’ve covered here is the very basic version of this. A professional will give greater attention to detail from shot to shot and will play with how the light falls on your object. In the example above the light source was static. Additionally if you have bigger products this sort of thing gets a bit harder. 
However if all you need are the results that the above set up will deliver there is no need to layout the additional expense of hiring a professional photographer.

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