Dear John, With respect to your third point: A well-known trick to avoid text on the back of a photo (or book page, etc.) to 'seep through' into the scan, is to place a sheet of black paper behind the photo or page. The result may get a little darker overall, but that can easily be corrected by the brightness control in the image processing program.
Regards, Frans Maes ----- Original Message ----- From: "John Carmichael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Sundial List" <sundial@rrz.uni-koeln.de> Sent: Thursday, April 29, 2004 4:52 PM Subject: Photographing Sundials > Hello All, > > Thanks to the wonderful BSS conference in Oxford, people have been sending > me new photos of spectacular unknown (to me) stained glass sundials. Some > are on enormous church windows and are just stunning in their beauty. > > But I just have to right this letter. While I'm extremely grateful and > appreciative of any photos people send me for our Image Archive, it is so > disheartening that the photos are often of such poor quality. Of course I'm > very happy to have them (a poor photo is better than no photo). > > But there are some simple things that the photographers can do minimize the > poor quality. > > 1. First of all, the biggest mistake that people make when they take their > pictures is that they don't hold their camera straight and the photograph > comes out crooked. > > 2. The 2ond big mistake is that the subject of the photo is not completely > contained in the frame and the sundial's image gets chopped off on one side. > Either zoom out on your telephoto or step back to increase the distance to > the subject! > > Many of the photos I get suffer from both these problems: They are crooked > and chopped off. > > 3. If you have prints made of your photos: Do NOT write on the back of them, > especially with a ball point pen! Felt tip are even worse. This often is > visible on the photograph when I scan the print!!! > > I don't want my letter to discourage people from sending me copies of their > photos, I'm just trying to educate everybody so that we get better photos in > the future. The BSS and NASS have the same problems with many photos on > their sundial registries. > > thanks for hearing me out on this. > > p.s. If you want to take REALLY good photos then use a tripod and try to > center the camera as close to directly in front of the sundial as possible > (hard to do with tall dials, I realize) > > > John L. Carmichael Jr. > Sundial sculptures > 925 E. Foothills Dr. > Tucson Arizona, 85718 USA > Tel: 520-696-1709 > Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sundial Sculptures Website: http://www.sundialsculptures.com > Stained Glass Sundials Website: > http://advanceassociates.com/Sundials/Stained_Glass > > > - > -
