Digital Stage Lighting
Images out of focus in darker condition.?
I have a 7X optical zoom 7 MP digital camera that works very well for my usual use. Recently I wanted to take pictures of a small theatre in Seattle for my personal web page design work. The overhead stage lights were on, but I later realized the stage photos taken from the back seat location did not have sharp images. It simply didn't have the focus I wanted. I am using AUTO mode from my camera.
Could you tell me what I can do to get sharp images of the theatre stage in a relatively dark condition? Thanks a lot.
Even with stage lights on , the absolute light level will be much less than what you have in outdoor photo situation. Your eyes do not accurately perceive large differences in overall light level. So, the situation that you describe is a low light environment. In these circumstances with the camera set to AUTO it will :
- Switch to a higher ISO setting. Beyond a certain point this will add noise to the photograph, and
- Switch to a slower shutter speed. This will make it difficult to take a steady picture handheld and will also do a worse job of "stopping the action".
The best bet is to try shooting with different custom modes where you control the camera settings. A small tripod or monopod would help. But shooting in low light is always a problem. You're working against basic optics.
One thing that you might do is to use the camera custom settings and deliberately underexpose, getting the benefit of a faster shutter. Then clean up the image using Photoshop or similar. It's amazing what you can produce from what initially looks like a bad photo.
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Taking Digital Photos for Online and Printed Product Catalogs
Whether you are planning to build an online product catalog or a printed version including rich digital photos will enhance it and will increase potential sales. When building a catalog photos are a powerful tool that you must use. Here are a few tips for taking digital photos that will bring justice to your products and will help increasing sales.
Product catalogs that do not include photos are boring. For example imagine that you are looking to buy a new digital photo printer. You just found a new online catalog or got a catalog via regular mail. The catalog has plenty of digital photo printers and also a lot of information about them such specifications, capabilities descriptions and more but it does not have any photos of the printer. You are most likely going to dump that catalog and search for the printer in another place.
This behavior is common to most consumers especially in this era of immediate gratification and impatience. Consumers do not want to spend time reading and figuring out what the product can do. They want to see a photo and get a short snippet of what the main features of the product are and what the price is.
Just taking photos and adding them to your catalog is not enough. Good photos can add a lot to a product image but at the same time bad photos can really damage that image. Here are some tips and concepts that can help taking good photos that in turn help selling products online:
Variation: Take more than one photo. Show the product from many angles: zoomed in and zoomed out and in different positions for example if the product is a clamshell-phone you should show it both in the opened and closed positions.
Quality: The photo quality must be as high as possible. Don't confuse quality with file size or resolution we refer here to photographic quality: Follow the rules of good photography, use a tripod when long exposure is needed make sure the photo is not overexposed or underexposed and that it is not blurry.
Background: It is very important to shoot with the appropriate background. Usually you would stage a background that is in contrast with the product and that has no details or distracting objects that can catch the viewer's attention. Make sure that the background is matte color and that it does not reflect light. For example when taking a photo of a black digital photo printer use a white or light gray background.
Show details: Emphasize the product details. Every product has unique features or important details that you would like to draw the viewer's attention to. The best way to do that is to take close-up photos of those details. You are not limited to physical details for example when selling an digital photo printer that has long battery life take a close-up photo of the digital photo printer's LCD screen displaying how much battery is left. Such a photo conveys credibility and is much more powerful than the product battery life specifications text.
Support the product description: Take photos that support the textual description of the product. For example if the text claims that the digital photo printer comes in three colors: black, silver and red show three photos of the printer in those colors.
Convey physical attributes: If your product has unique physical attributes that you would like to emphasize take photos that convey them. For example if the product size is important use a known size object in order to help the viewer visualize the size take a photo of the digital photo printer next to a quarter coin to show how small the printer is. It is much easier for viewers to visualize and understand measurements if they are put in reference with objects they know very well. This is much more powerful than specifying inches and ounces in a textual specification.
Keep file sizes small: This is relevant for online catalog only. Keep the photo file size small. When viewing a photo on a computer screen low resolution photos are more than enough. In most cases a VGA (640X480) picture is all that is needed and such a photo file size can be 50Kbytes or less. It is important to keep this in mind and not be tempted to put high resolution big photos files. Such big files load slowly on the viewer's computer and in most cases the viewer will get frustrated from the slow response and would just skip to the next site.
About the Author
Mr. Haparnas writes about practical technology issues. Information about photography and photo prints is on printrates.com - your home for digital photo printing This article can be reprinted and used as long as the resource box including the backlink is included. Ziv Haparnas is an expert technology writer.
