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Mushrooms, Mycology and Psychedelics > Mushroom Hunting and Identification
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How do you set your camera up to take great pictures?
    #10842524 -

So I found about 9 shrooms on my walk, and wanted two different species ID'd, well my fucking camera sucks ass and won't focus so I can't ID these.

How do you guys set up your camera to focus?

I have my camera (6.2 mega pixels) on Macro, no flash, the ISO speed is 100 for my shaky hands, and whenever I get close, it starts to auto focus and then says "cannot focus" and it might say "too close", but when I zoom out it looks PERFECT, then goes blurry. No way to capture the perfect-ness.


How do you guys set up your camera?

I have a HP photosmart R727


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"May the long-time sun shine upon you
And all love surround you
And the clear light within you
Guide your way home."

"Its never too late to start beefing up your obituary"- The Most Interesting Man in the World

:aum:

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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: Agent MadHatter]
    #10842543 -

I like to step a little back and zoom in. Seems to work better than macro for me. :shrug:


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You make it all possible. Doesn't it feel good?

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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: Agent MadHatter]
    #10842555 -

if your hands shake don't use macro, hold your hands against something, the ground, a log when you take the shot. Or set up a tripod and take a delayed shot.

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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: falcon]
    #10842619 -

Ok thanks, I got some shots now from using my desk as a stabilizer and zooming in a bit.


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"May the long-time sun shine upon you
And all love surround you
And the clear light within you
Guide your way home."

"Its never too late to start beefing up your obituary"- The Most Interesting Man in the World

:aum:

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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: Agent MadHatter]
    #10842834 -

You're going to have to learn a few settings on your camera. All of the following will significantly improve your shot. Use what you have on your camera/want to learn.

1. DELAY. Set the camera on 2-second delay.
2. TRIPOD. You can't hold the camera. The slight shake in your hands will blur the shot every time. If you don't have a tripod, it's a little tougher. Put the camera down on the ground or stack up some random crap to point it at the fungi.
3. MICRO-MODE. If you have a micro mode on your camera, use it to focus your shot--about 20-30cm away should be good.
4. SIZE REFERENCE. put a lighter/knife/dollar in the pic to give some reference of size
5. NO FLASH. I find that I get much better results when I turn the flash off and take pics outside. Not direct sunlight; an hour before sunset (or sunrise, if you're an early riser--personally I prefer sunset :smile:) or on a cloudy day.
6. LIGHT FILTER. You can also play with the light filter on your camera. If the pic is too dark, use this setting to increase the brightness of your shot.

Press the button and take your hand off the camera. It should take the shot a moment later.

To finish it for web publication, Crop and resize the pic to 72 pixels per inch and 600 pixels wide. The shroomery government has imposed a 512K size limit on pics, so you probably want to save it in .gif format.  I prefer .png or .jpg, but sometimes that means more fiddling to get it below 512K.

As you can see from my shots below, they come out perfect this way.

Edited by tangoking (08/12/09 12:56 AM)

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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: Agent MadHatter]
    #10843386 -

Quote:
I have a HP photosmart R727


The macro on that camera can go up to ten centimeters.

You have to change the focus mode to macro.

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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: Alan Rockefeller]
    #10843869 -

In addition to the advice above, which, for a considerable part, I agree with:
- Use your camera's macro setting. If you don't, it won't focus at distances closer than ca. 1.5ft Keep in mind that the closes focus distance is available with the lens completely zoomed out. This seems counterintuitive, but makes sense from a technical viewpoint.
- Use a tripod to prevent camera shake. With mushroom photography, there really is no alternative (unless you're willing to drag a lot of artificial light to your finds). Tangoking's advice regarding the delay is especially useful when you use a tripod.
- If you want to use flash, make sure your camera has a flash exposure compensation function and set it to -1 or -2 stops. If your camera does not have such a feature, don't use flash. It'll probably wash out the image.

Quote:
The shroomery government has imposed a 512K size limit on pics, so you probably want to save it in .gif format.  I prefer .png or .jpg, but sometimes that means more fiddling to get it below 512K.


The .gif format is a fossil from the VGA-era when video cards would produce no more than 256 colors. When converting to .gif, the colors are reduced to a 256-color palette, i.e. your colors get completely fucked up (high grain, posterization, etc. Sucks.) Also, since .gif is an uncompressed format, the files may end up being roughly the same size as compressed, but 'true color' jpegs. Personally, I always save my jpegs  at a width of 700px and quality level 10 (out of 12; so that's 'high' quality). Even with grainy film scans, file size never exceeds 400kb.

Quote:
6. LIGHT FILTER. You can also play with the light filter on your camera. If the pic is too dark, use this setting to increase the brightness of your shot.


I have no idea with this 'light filter' is, but I suspect it's an in-camera post processing option that will lighten or darken certain areas of the image. Although possibly useful in some situations, I would suggest spending some time on learning to set proper exposure. A well-lit and properly exposed mushroom photograph needs no post processing to lighten or darken any areas. Use a reflector (e.g. white sheet of paper) to light up very deep shadows if necessary.

Also, be sure to check out the link in my signature. It's a long read, but it may be helpful still.

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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: koraks]
    #10851251 -

Great advise from both of you.  I toggled the thread.


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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: Mr. Mushrooms]
    #11449949 -

http://www.koraks.nl/index.php?menuparent=&page=9


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My Drying Chamber




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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: Satori23]
    #11450056 -

I just put mine on macro, half press the button to focus, then press all the way. Works like a charm.

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Re: How do you set your camera up to take great pictures? [Re: elprawn]
    #11450375 -

If you don't have a tripod, steady your camera against the ground, your knee, a tree, etc etc. My camera won't focus at all if it's the least bit dark out. Set your resolution /picture quality high as you can, and if you have to hold the camera a little ways away to get it to focus, you can crop it later. My camera doesn't have a macro setting. Also, sometimes if the subject is in the sun, it will turn out all washed out, so I make some shade to take the picture in so the colors will show.
I throw everything into paint, half the size and save as jpeg to upload to shroomery.


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Mushrooms, Mycology and Psychedelics > Mushroom Hunting and Identification
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