Photographing Embroidery

As much as I love my fancy camera (what I call my Canon DSLR) I struggle when taking photos of embroidery. My first love was point-and-shoot cameras, and I long for them whenever I have a detailed embroidery photo to take.

The photos above and below were taken with my phone camera, which I've found works better for me at times than my DSLR.



I recently did a review of Coloris floss for Feeling Stitchy, and the biggest challenge was photographing the beautiful rainbow of shades in the flosses. My DSLR is capable of so much more than a phone camera, but you really have to know what you're doing. It's frustrating not to be able to pop it in "Auto" mode like a point-and-shoot and get lots of crisp, detailed, bright shots without any effort.



Here is a photo from my DSLR - it has all the detail I want, but it took so much work - I had to put the camera in Manual mode, carefully light the scene, then color-correct in Photoshop, and I'll admit I'm still not 100% happy with it. I feel like it's just... missing something.

Here's another from my DSLR:



And one more from the phone camera:


Does anybody else struggle with photographing their embroidery?

More photos from the old camera

It takes a bit of work and tweaking with actions in Photoshop, but the old camera produces some nice shots.

I find the key is never to take a photo in an ISO higher than 400 for this camera, and to only take photos in bright light. It just gets too grainy to use, otherwise.



I'm pretty pleased with the amount of detail I can capture from a distance - this was shot from an open car window, and a good distance away.



Up close shots like the sparrow above are pretty nice, but look better with a bit of sharpening and tweaking.



This thistle was another one captured a fair distance away.



Overall, it's been fun playing with this old little gem.

Bowie in progress

Just a little something I'm working on - I'm teaching someone nice to cross stitch, and it's such a pleasant, familiar feeling to separate the little piles of floss and work in an orderly fashion...



I'm still playing with the older camera - and it's a tricky business getting a clear, sharp photo - but the added challenge has made it fun. I always enjoy working within strict limitations, and seeing what I can make of them.









I only realized this week I've reached my 10 year anniversary of blogging - 10 years! In honor of this occasion, I've been tweaking the template a bit to spiff things up a bit. Apologies if you see something bizarre as I muck around in the code. :)

Return to photography

I used to love snapping photos, but it wasn't until recently that I got back into it. I set myself the task of picking up one of my old cameras, which I never fully learned how to use, and teaching myself the ins and outs of it.



The camera has its limitations - being older, it doesn't do well in low light - anything above ISO 800 is too grainy to be useable. But in good light, it snaps some nice pics, and it has a nice zoom.



I've been using that zoom to do my photography in the exact opposite way that I usually approach it - I usually get very close to objects and do macro shots.

Instead, I've been zooming all the way in, to get close to things I am actually very far away from.



I've been using two free Photoshop Actions from the Coffee Shop blog which I highly recommend:
Vivid 2 and Perfect Portrait.



The actions do a great job brightening and sharpening up images I didn't think I could use. It's been fun to get back into snapping pics and editing them!

Flashback Friday: Older projects

Sometimes it's such a drag getting my projects photographed and uploaded - I love this family tree pillow, stitched from a lovely pattern by Cozyblue, but it was all I could do to take some pics and upload them. So here it is finally, about 3 months after I finished it.

I snapped the pic above with my cameraphone and applied an Instagram-y filter to it, using the new Flickr app for uploading from phones.

Our house is so dark, and it's rare to get the lighting right. I'm still getting used to my fancy camera, which is great at some things, and harder to get used to for others.

For detailed shots, I still prefer point and shoots and my cameraphone. I've used my cameraphone on all my New Knit Stitch of the Week posts.



Like this June 2012 stitchalong finish - that I snapped a photo of with my cameraphone. The quality is not perfect, but I love the crispness of the detail. I snapped a photo of it already, years ago with my last point-and-shoot, but this pic shows the details a little better.

More about these two pics, tomorrow! :)