Pauline Inglis

I am having problems uploading photos as they keep coming back saying they have been scanned but I am using my camera. they are either washed out or over exposed I'm not sure what I am doing wrong can anyone give me any tips please.
pauline x

June Young

Are these photos of finished cards? Ideally you need to take your photo in reasonably good daylight -don't use flash, that could account for the 'washed out' look. Try and have a reasonably neutral background because if you have something blindingly white your camera will under expose to compensate and if you have sokething dead black it will over-expose for the same reason. You can get a small 'tent' from camera suppliers (or ebay) which is not very expensive and while these are white inside they have white walls as well which help put light onto the front of the object. Above all, as I said, avoid using flash.

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Jan Ellison

I had this problem recently with a card that was three quarters midnight blue. The camera made the card looked washed out. I opened the card in a photo program and darkened it, which made it look so much better. I then saved it and uploaded it.

Karen Cogan

Hi Pauline,
I bought a studio tent recently and haven't had a problem uploading photos since. The one I have has the light at the top & has silver walls. The backgrounds supplied are either white or black but there's nothing to stop me buying a bit of material to make other colours but I've not found a need for that yet.

If you view my cards on CUP sorted into newest first the last 10 have used the tent - just so you get an idea of how they look.

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Gail Collins

dont photograph it in a poly bag if that is what you are doing also check the setting on your camera ,i find if you hold it quite away above the card if on a flat surface you dont get a glare and then you can enlarge it on the computer and as some else said you can alter the brightnes on the computer.

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Faith Irvine

Originally Posted by Karen Cogan

Hi Pauline, I bought a studio tent recently and haven't had a problem uploading photos since. The one I have has the light at the top & has silver walls. The backgrounds supplied are either white or black but there's nothing to stop me buying a bit of material to make other colours but I've not found a need for that yet. If you view my cards on CUP sorted into newest first the last 10 have used the tent - just so you get an idea of how they look.

Where did you get the tent from Karen? xx

Karen Cogan

Originally Posted by Faith Irvine

Where did you get the tent from Karen? xx

Hi Faith,
Bought it from Amazon website it was a third party trader but free p&p.
If you search for 'studio tent' you get a selection.
The one I got was this one which was a little more expensive but I liked the design. I guess it depends what you want.
I will say the bulb is huge but doesn't get too hot. The first one blew straight away but I contacted the seller via Amazon & they sent another out which was received very quickly which has been fine. I haven't yet found out how much a replacement bulb is.
Oh & I haven't used the camera attachment thing as I couldn't get the angle right for my camera probably because its a small compact & I think it's made for the big SLRs

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Dianne Jackson

I use mostly a black background, but depending on the colour of the card I can also use white and red. I edit my pictures in Picassa, a free download and I cannot praise it enough

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Gwyneth George

By a lot of experimentation with different backgrounds, different angles, different camera distances from the card, etc. I always take several photos of any cards I make and then look through each one in turn to choose the best one before uploading. Try the card at a slight angle to the light source rather than the light source being directly in front, try the camera at a slight angle to the card, which I've found to be necessary if the card has any shiny surface on it, try taking pictures from close and further away from the card. I've found that I get the best picture if I put lighter cards on a black background and realy dark cards on a white/light background. The automatic settings on my camera looks for the range of light to dark in the area of the picture being taken and tries to adjust for a range, so if you have a card that's mostly dark it will usually adjust lighter, and if a card is mostly light it will try to adjust so that the image is darker. I make sure I don't take the photo from too close, so that a wide border of the background, of whichever colour, is visible in the viewfinder around my card. And I take my pictures at high resolution. The software I use to crop and do any other adjustments after transfering the pictures to my Laptop is IrfanView. This is free and you can crop, do automatic colour adjustments or manual adjustments, as well as do fine rotational adjustment if a card is slightly on the squiff in the photo, and finally resize down to around the 600 x 800 for the main CUP site or the 1000 pixels wide for the competition gallery.

It's mostly down to experimentation as everybody's ambient light, camera, location for taking card pictures, are all different, and of course sunlight changes during the day as well.

Hope you find out what works best for you.

GG

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ShayBug

keep your camera around, you never know what you want to remember and show off later in a project.