[TheForge] Re: Photographing your work

[Phlip]

Ene bichizh ogsen baina shuu...

> Phlip:
>
> For what we do as smiths, I've found the digital camara meets all my needs
in photographing work and other general uses.
>
> I use a Nikon 2500 from the Coolpix series. Cost about $500 in December.
Each manufacturer includes a CD to download the program necessary to
manipulate your images in your computer. There are numerous aftermarket
programs like Picassa and the like, but they charge either monthly fees or a
purchase price.  For my needs these are superfluous. I'm an experienced
photographer with darkroom time going back 30 years. I've found the real
benefits of digital are: it offers immediacy in getting image from camara to
computer to usable form, immediate review of image in the field or studio,
and no developing expense if you have a color printer on your computer.
Chain drugstores enable you to do enlargements in their facilities quickly.
>
> The Nikon and many other makes have a built in flash that engages far too
often for my taste. I keep a piece of masking tape over the flash lens to
diffuse and block it when it goes off. Makes for softer images. Digital is
excellent in low light environments. The subtlties of finishes and hammer
marks takes a little work to capture well, but it all is getting to know
your camara's capabilites in the ambient light environment.

OK, this is the high-tech, high expense answer, and that sort of thing has
its validity, but there should also be some less expensive, viable
alternatives as well. For example, a new smith can get a start with a RR
track anvil, and do some good work, amongst mangling a bit of metal- s/he
doesn't necessarily need, for example, a $1000 Peter Wright.

I, too, have tried a bit of photography, but handing me a high-dollar,
can-do-anything-if-you-set-it-properly camera is an utter waste- it takes
some doing to figure out where and why you need all these wonderful
settings, just as it takes some doing to utilize a good anvil properly.
Until you've enough experience to notice what you're lacking, you haven't
the first clue as to how to set things so you can get consistant results,
let alone spectacular ones.

So, what do you guys suggest as a good, workman-like digital camera, perhaps
a step above an Instamatic-equivalent, pretty user friendly, and
inexpensive?

> I'd go on but it is hard for me to sit long now that I have this thing
forge welded and stuck in my prominent arse. LOL.
>
> Reynolds

Well, you know, some people see knife blades, and some people see busted
springs. Seems to me, you've got the basis for a tripod, but what would I
know?

OTOH, a sensible person might tend to be careful in future, about just whose
fire they lit- and why...


Phlip

 If it walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, it is probably not a
cat.

Never a horse that cain't be rode,
And never a rider who cain't be throwed....