I complained about not having a tripod in an earlier post. I have rectified the situation with a true cheap piece of crap from the local evil overlords (meaning Wal-mart). It works for my purposes. I’ve put together a little comparison and contrast showing how I used aperture to control sharpness and light levels for a series of photographs.
I’m still not getting razor sharp focus. I live in a house with a wooden joist floor structure. I used a 10 second timer to take all these photos to eliminate hand/finger/button pressing shake, but I wonder if my breathing transferred through the floor to the camera tripod! In the future, I’ll be sure to clean my lens before taking shots like these, as well. Or maybe my lens is just cheap.
Only the closeups were edited (other than for size), and I used the always-free GIMP, which I’m actually not very familiar with. My photoshop install is on another computer, and I was too lazy to switch.
The Boys in Olive Drab
Light Shot...around 2.5 sec
Medium Shot...around 2.0 sec
Dark Shot...around 1.75 sec
Here you can see the difference a single click of the dial on the aperture control can make. I used the ‘dark’ photograph to do the following close-up.
Close up from the dark shot, 5% contrast boost, extremely slight unsharp mask
I’m going to have to paint better, now that the photography is improving. A mixed blessing, for sure. Here come the Germans…
Der Fieldgrau
Light Germans...around 2.5 sec
Medium Germans...around 2.0 sec
Dark Germans...around 1.75 sec
The lightest setting looked best for the Germans with their darker uniforms. Here’s a close-up.
Close up of Germans, 10% contrast boost and a very slight unsharp mask. From the light shot.
You’ll notice my paper background is so over-exposed as to disappear. I’m not sure that I’m a big fan of the look. Then again, I’m not sure that I’m not!
I should apologize for the crappy photographs, all taken from ‘man height.’ It’s lazy. That said, the point of this was to establish some baselines for myself and that is accomplished.
ArkieGamer 