Photography (1)

[fusilier23]

I finally figured out how to shoot small objects close up. As some of you may know, I'm a collector of soldiers, and I've shot a few pics of the higher-end pieces in my collection, though I have literally hundreds more. See what you think.



Left to right: Officer, standard bearer, and High Master of the Teutonic Order, Master of the Brotherhood of the Sword.




Left to right:: Teutonic Knight, Knight Templar, Knight Hospitaller (also called the Knights of St. John)



Crusaders of the Third Crusade





Richard the Lionhearted leads other Crusaders in the charge.



Feudal kings. The Emperor Charlemagne is on the left, but I liked the figure so much I got a second one and had it painted as Brian Boru, High King of Ireland, who you see on the right.





Robert the Bruce holding aloft the standard of Scotland and shouting, next to a somewhat more accurate version of Sir William Wallace.

[Mark]

Hi

Those are some really good shots of small objects, the colours show up fantastically well ! I guess you must be a collector ! Do you paint the models yourself ?

I have been out taking a few shots myself today. Sometime ago on this thread, I posted some pictures of the famous Banbury Cross in my home town in the heart of Oxfordshire (uk). Richard did a little research about the history of the cross and the nearby Broughton Castle was mentioned. This large country house has been the setting for many famous films over the past 30 or so years and at last I have managed to get some shots of it for you to enjoy.



This was the church where the wedding took place in the film 4 weddings & a funeral !











The castle moat was dead still and has a great relection of the building in it !




I think my photograpy may have improved a little too !!

Regards
Mark.

[Dave]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for the nice photos!

But I have a request. Please check the file size of your photos before posting them in the forum and - in general - make sure they are around 50KB or less. This should be enough to ensure good quality for most photos of the size you can post in the forum but if the quality looks poor, you can go a bit higher. It also helps if you limit the number of photos included in a single post to 3 or 4 but a few more is OK if they are small in dimensions and filesize.

Even for largish photos (say full width i.e. 700/800 pixels wide) you shouldn't often need to get far into the 50KB to 99 KB range - the trick is to simply increase the jpeg compression when saving photos before posting in the forum. The upper limit is normally 99 KB, anything larger should be reserved for scans of text if it needs to be readable.

So what's the problem? Well if you currently (as I write) click on "Last 30 posts", the forum page displayed is 5.80 MB in size - mainly because of 16 large photo files posted today. It will take a dial-up member approximately 16 minutes to load and display the page - not very good for them, especially as most large photo files can be made smaller without significant quality loss. A clickable link should normally be used if a photo file cannot be made smaller or small enough.

I'd appreciate it if anyone who posted photos today would check the file sizes and repost with smaller files if necessary.

Cheers, Dave

Remember remember the dial-up member!

[Mark]

Hi Dave

Sorry to have posted these pics in large files, I didnt realise that you could/needed to change the file sizes - sorry to anyone who uses dial-up !! But Dave, how do I resize and then how do I re post ? Is it a case of going back into Photobucket and changing something there ? Sorry, this is still all new to me !

Regards
Mark

[fusilier23]

Umm, yes, I need some help with shrinkage also.

[Dave]

Hi guys,

If they are photos you are hosting in your photobucket or similar, you need to go back to the original photos on your PC and open them one at a time in your photo processing software. Then, when you've cropped or resized them so the dimensions are OK for the forum, select to "Save As" and when you choose the image type as .jpeg, you should see an Options button of some kind. This lets you change the amount of jpeg compression - you need to increase the compression (or reduce the 'quality') then save the image (change the file name slightly or better still save it to a new folder, to avoid ruining the original version!).

The only way to find out how much compression (or quality reduction) looks OK is by trial and error... unless you have a preview button as in Paint Shop Pro (the Optimizer). If you are stuck, I will start a thread on this in Technical Support (I may do anyway) but it will have to be in a few hours time!

When you have a smaller file that looks OK, just upload it again to your photobucket etc., delete the original bigger file (in photobucket not on your PC ) and replace it with the new smaller file. If you use the same file name (at photobucket) you won't need to edit your forum post at all so there's no rush.

Cheers, Dave

[comet]

Hi Dave.

Does this mean you have to reduce the " Quantia Qualia"

[comet]

Hi Fusilier.

Love the Brian Boru !

But what is the numbered board in the backround used for. ?

Was it hand painted in situ ?

You are the only person I have known to use the word " cur " since 1970.
With reference to the one who hides Hayley's CDs

A plague upon their cd players.

Good luck !

[Joe]

Hi Steve O!

I really love these photos...the detailing of the figures are remarkable! Your Richard the Lionhearted figure is my favorite!

I have dial-up (I hope I'm not the only one )I had no trouble getting these pics to load. Although a few were a bit wide for my screen. Last week someone on my Cottars forum was posting photos sized 2400X1600!

Keep these pics coming I say!

Cheers,
Joe

[fusilier23]

Hi guys,

The numbered board in the background is simply a dartboard that hangs over the cabinet where I keep my figures, and I took these completely "on the fly" this morning. Glad you like the kingly figures, though, alas, that particular King Richard is no longer available (he was bought nine years ago), and the Brian Boru is quite possibly the only figure of its kind in the world, since the figure was painted to my spec.

As for those who I named cur, I agree. A plague on all their houses and their foul leaders.

[Dave]

Hi Joe, thanks for your comments and I'm glad you got to see all the photos OK! Do you use the "Last 30 posts" feature? That's where the main problem would be as the day's photos were in different threads and Last 30 posts collects them all together, of course. Going direct to the thread you are interested in tends to make things easier if you are on dial-up (I do try it occasionally )

Congratulations on reaching your third anniversary at HWI, you really are one of the old-timers now! That's exactly one month more than me (I was probably a lurker when you joined!) Part of the furniture indeed, yes that's what you are and here's to your next three years so here's three cheers for Joe!

Quickly back on topic - and as it won't be easy to go back and re-do the latest batches of photos, let's leave them as they are this time and just bear in mind the file size considerations for the future. We're unlikely to comment on them unless they are way beyond the guidelines.

If anyone gets stuck when trying to "shrink" the filesize next time, feel free to start a thread about it in Technical support board. Finally, just to tidy this up, I'll post an example of an original "large" photo and a recompressed much smaller version in a minute, see if you can easily spot the difference

Cheers, Dave

[Dave]

Hi again, as promised, here are a couple of comparison shots taken from a nice photo posted by Mark half a day or so ago:

Original photo (228 KB)


Same photo recompressed at 30% setting (47 KB)

It didn't have to go quite that small but even at that setting, to my old eyes there's not a lot of difference between the two versions. But as i said, there's no need for anyone to go back and re-do the photos already posted.

Cheers, Dave

[graemek]

dave said:

Hi again, as promised, here are a couple of comparison shots taken from a nice photo posted by Graeme half a day or so ago:

Original photo (228 KB)


Same photo recompressed at 30% setting (47 KB)

It didn't have to go quite that small but even at that setting, to my old eyes there's not a lot of difference between the two versions. But as i said, there's no need for anyone to go back and re-do the photos already posted.

Cheers, Dave

Hi Dave, It wasn't mine but Mark's.
I haven't been to Europe since 1995.
While I've got your attention:
Not long ago I learnt off Richard how to adjust displayed sizes like this :
first image tag like this: ,
the original size in pixels of the pic being larger than that.
Since then I've done that a lot including recently comparing maps of NZ & UK (on Belindas NZ Facts thread) to make the scales read the same. (so you could compare the sizes of those countries)
The beauty of it was & is that you don't edit someone else's pic in any way & are able to link it back to its source.

What I'm still not absolutely sure of is whether the adjusted size gets downloaded or the original size

Please instruct me.
Graemek

[Joe]

dave said:

Hi Joe, thanks for your comments and I'm glad you got to see all the photos OK! Do you use the "Last 30 posts" feature?

Congratulations on reaching your third anniversary at HWI, you really are one of the old-timers now! That's exactly one month more than me (I was probably a lurker when you joined!) Part of the furniture indeed, yes that's what you are and here's to your next three years so here's three cheers for Joe!

Hi Dave,

I use the search feature (under the forum banner) to view the day's posts. I scroll to the bottom and enter 60 in the max. results box.

Thanks for your kind words re my three years...part of the furniture...I reckon I'm a three-piece suite! :wink: Yes...another three years!

I really never looked at the filesize of my pictures. I just made sure they fit on the page OK. Will do in future.

Cheers

[Joe]

Hello Mark!

Thanks for posting more pics from lovely Oxfordshire. I trust the stately home and the castle are open to tourists? With the Banbury Cross in the distance, the castle doesn't look too far from the city centre.

Cheers,
Joe