Photo Experimentation. . .

They might be giants. . . Another shot of the same vignette, this time against a neutral background in the lightbox.

Goofing around this morning with the camera timer and lightbox. Here are the particulars:

* Distance between Sony Cyber-shot TX20 camera and subject -- slightly over 8" or 20.5cm.
* Camera flipped automatically into the macro setting.
* Tripod used.
* Self-timer set for 10 seconds. . . Look Mom, no hands!
* No flash. Indirect, diffused lighting came from three different lamps each with 100watt "daylight" corkscrew bulb. One aimed at the top of the lightbox, and two aimed at either side of the light box. No lights were aimed directly onto the figures.
* Five slightly different pictures were taken. This one was the best as far as the position of the base and both figures goes.

In Photoshop Elements 9, I pasted in the picture and first cropped it way, way down from the original size, and then used in turn the following bits of editing magic: 1) Select > All, 2) Auto Smart Fix, 3) Adjust Color > Remove Color Cast, and 4) Auto Sharpen. I finally saved it again onto my computer desktop as a jpeg file. The original unedited photograph has also been saved.

Later, today, time permitting since we are headed out tobogganing and then to a cafe for warm beverages afterwards, I'll try the same photo with 9"/approx. 23cm and 10"/approx. 25.5cm between the camera and subject, to find that sweet spot as suggested some weeks ago by Der Alte Fritz. Be sure to check back later.

This evening, it's back to the painting table for a while to start either on those Fife&Drum 4-pounder Swedish cannons that have been cluttering the painting table for eons, or maybe I'll start on the next two-figure vignette.

-- Stokes

Comments

Phil said…

Nice photo!

1:56 PM

Scheck said…

looks really wonderful - this is a splendid vignette!
_Peter

11:06 AM

Sean said…

Finally catching up on your blog. I think your time with the camera and photoshop has been well spent. I think your pictures are looking quite good. Keep experimenting with what works best for you, but I can find nothing for you to improve at this point. Great work.

9:45 AM

WSTKS-FM Worldwide said…

Thank you, men! It's been a lot of fun experimenting with the camera and(hopefully) improving my photography skills. I thought the time was high to take the quality of what appears here on the GD of S blog to the next level. Be sure to drop by again soon.

Best Regards,

Stokes

10:17 AM

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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