Cell phone camera

brianvds

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For "artsy" kind of photography, I sort of prefer a humble P&S or cell phone camera - they have no technical stuff to struggle with, and it forces you to look for interesting patterns or compositions, or the beauty of the everyday world around you, rather than triumph through technology. :)

These are all from 2020:

2020 African daisy Osteospermum.jpg


2020 Aloe flower with bee.jpg


2020 Aloe flowers (2).jpg


2020 Aloes in bloom.jpg


2020 Autumn leaves (1).jpg


2020 Carpobrotus edulis (2).jpg


2020 Crack in the wall.jpg


2020 Dandelion DSC_0783.JPG


2020 Evening clouds.JPG


2020 Gecko on the other side (2).jpg


Will upload some more later... :)
 
WOW! What kind of cell phone do you have? These are BRILLIANT!

Got a Samsung as a gift some years ago (a smart phone is another item I could never afford for myself). Don't even know exactly which model; I'm not a very technical person. But I find that for some subjects one actually gets better results with it than with a fancy camera. :)

Here's another batch, also from 2020:

2020 Geranium.JPG


2020 Grass flowers.jpg


2020 Green milkweed locust - Phymateus viridipes detail.jpg


2020 Leonotis.jpg


2020 Machine.jpg


2020 Mammatus clouds.jpg


2020 Prickly pears.jpg


2020 Purple leaf sand cherry blossoms.jpg


2020 Succulent.jpg


2020 Two geese.jpg
 
Great shots Brian. Timely thread. I'm starting to prepare to take "proper" photos of my paintings so I'm trying to learn this stuff. I have a good dslr camera but hardly ever use it. I have to relearn it every year it seems. In the meantime my newish Samsung phone is always with me and takes great photos. I don't even use it to its' potential. It can be used with manual settings etc. 10x optical zoom and 100 digital, stabilized. Amazing. I don't bother with binoculars anymore for birdwatching. Plus I get photos of them.

But it seems that for the best pics of our paintings a full size dslr is the way to go from what I'm learning. Like you said, our cell phone pics sometimes look better than dedicated cameras, and it's because of the built processing of the image in the phone. It adds contrast and saturation etc. Regular camera images can be run through Lightroom and Photoshop to do this also.

I've always used cellphone cams to take pics of my painting. But now that I'm starting to sell my paintings I'm facing using the big camera, on a tripod, with lights etc, running through the confusing technological minefield of "pro level" photography. On the up side it means having as good an image as possible so that if I want to enlarge them for printing later they will look as good as possible. I will have an easier time letting go of my paintings if I know I can print them to canvas later if I want. Apparently cell phone cam images simply don't have the resolution. They say that if you enlarge both a phone pic and a dslr pic one can see the difference.

And one will take two seconds to take and the other 30 minutes.

Please someone tell me the cell phone is just as good. :)

And will these inkjet printed canvases last? Maybe attach a microchip with the image on the back of the painting?
 
For posting pictures of your paintings in online forums, Instagram, etc. the cell phone is just as good. That's what they were intended for originally, but they've gotten a lot better. I don't understand why you will need a big camera to take pictures of your paintings to go online where they will be viewed on small-screen cell phones, laptops, notebooks, etc., occasionally a large desktop screen. Big cameras with big image sensors are useful for making big wall posters. Cell phones with small image sensors are not, the image starts looking crunchy and pixilated as it is enlarged.
 
My experience thus far has been that no camera of any kind ever quite accurately reproduces the color in a painting. It takes a lot of tweaking in Gimp (or Photoshop, for those who can afford it) to come even close. Of course, various screens will also tend to show colors differently, and they will change even more when printed, so there are in any event limits on what can be achieved. In fact, to get philosophical, in a sense there isn't such a thing as the "real color" of a picture. :)

This is of course one reason why an original painting is worth more than any print.
 
Brain, I also have an older-ish Samsung. I think you just take good pictures.

I can't afford Photoshop either. I have an older bootleg edition of it--the CS edition before you needed a subscription. It works just as well. I also have Gimp, but have not really used it. Looks similar and probably does the same shit.
 
Brain, I also have an older-ish Samsung. I think you just take good pictures.

I can't afford Photoshop either. I have an older bootleg edition of it--the CS edition before you needed a subscription. It works just as well. I also have Gimp, but have not really used it. Looks similar and probably does the same shit.

Yup, Gimp does pretty much the same stuff as Photoshop, though perhaps it doesn't have quite as many functions. I wouldn't know - I do not need all that many functions anyway. :)

New batch of cell phone pics, this time from 2021:

2021 Autumn leaves (2).jpg


2021 Bark patterns.jpg


2021 Bushwillow trunk.jpg


2021 Cloudscape, Pretoria (2).jpg


2021 Colorful mugs.jpg


2021 Coral tree flowers.JPG


2021 Electricity.jpg


2021 Hoverfly (3).jpg


2021 Lantern.jpg


2021 Magnolia flowers (2).JPG
 
I have a Samsung but have rarely used it for pictures .. I think I will have to check it out. Your photographs are excellent and that is not all to do with the camera.
 
My experience thus far has been that no camera of any kind ever quite accurately reproduces the color in a painting. It takes a lot of tweaking in Gimp (or Photoshop, for those who can afford it) to come even close. Of course, various screens will also tend to show colors differently, and they will change even more when printed, so there are in any event limits on what can be achieved. In fact, to get philosophical, in a sense there isn't such a thing as the "real color" of a picture. :)

This is of course one reason why an original painting is worth more than any print.
Have a look at a variant of Gimp called Glimpse. It has a friendlier interface than Gimp and is also free. I use it for one thing only: to make grids for paintings. For most of my photo processing I use a legal copy of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2023.

https://glimpse-editor.org
 
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