Digital Camera that can take good quality photographs of porcelain?
I was wondering if any one knows a camera that is reasonably priced (£100-300) and can take good quality photographs of porcelain and ceramics. I need to take some photos and place them on a professional website. Any answers are much appreciated.
Spend as much as you can afford - once you are over the £200 mark you're not going to be disappointed at the results, and anything with over 10Mpx is going to give you plenty of detail. It's really a matter of personal taste, so go to a big camera store (I got good service at Jessops) and browse, ask advice, handle a few in your price range, before you decide.
At under £300 it's probably not worth going for a Digital SLR, the type with the prism on top and interchangeable lenses, because you would then need to spend another £100 or more on a specialist lens for your job to get the best out of that sort of camera. So stick to the pocket-sized cameras and get a good one.
More important, though, is how you take your photos of the porcelain. Lighting is everything, and you must experiment with different ways of illuminating the subject. The on-camera flash is not likely to give good results. Look at some professional shots of similar things in glossy magazines - you will see that shadows are usually very soft, which means that lighting from the sides and top are important. You don't need fancy lights - electric lights and daylight are OK because good cameras can correct for colour imbalance, and you can use a sheet of white paper to reflect light where you want it.
After you've taken a few shots, experiment with the photo software that should come with the camera, to get different brightness and contrast effects. It can make all the difference between an ordinary shot and a good one. But don't try doctoring the photo too much - it will show.
Finally, keep the file size as big as the system and website will allow. The more you compress the file the worse the effect on sharpness and detail. If working in jpg format, the picture degrades every time you save it, so aim to do all the modifications at the same time then save it only once.
US $34.00
