Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Wasting time...on pictures

Don't you hate when you waste your time on something that you have to do all over again? That happened to me today.

I am often on a quest for better pictures of my jewelry for my shop. I don't have a fancy digital camera, it's just a mediocre one. I can't do some of the neat tricks with focusing that I've seen, but it's good enough for my pictures. (for now) I'd like us to get a better camera eventually - again nothing fancy but just with more options than the one we have.

My son was playing with the camera recently, he learned how to take pictures with it, and accidentally set it to 1 mega pixel. I didn't know that. Today I spent about 40 mins outside taking nicer pictures of some jewelry items, excited with how they seemed to have turned out. I downloaded them all, and after editing the light/colors I go to resize them and find out how small the pictures were on the screen. I finally checked the camera and saw it was set to 1 mega pixel. That means everything was not as big or as up close as I needed it to be, and I had wasted another 20 mins at least editing unusable pictures. They would have just been similar to the pictures I already had and wasn't happy with. The problem for me is getting close enough with the camera. I use the macro button(flower symbol) but even then, my camera doesn't let me get very close in - it just gets blurry if I am too close no matter how much daylight I have. But today, I was determined to get better pictures somehow!

So after being very frustrated about all the time I wasted, I got the chance before sunset to snap a bunch of redo pictures outside, this time setting the camera back to a higher 5 mega pixels(it goes to 7 but I didn't think I needed it - I bet I do).

Do you wonder what I am rambling about? There's a clarity/size difference. For Etsy search results it makes a big difference if people can see the item closer up in the small boxes that show up. They might be more likely to click instead of overlook. *I hope I hope I hope*

Here are differences for you to see...what I had(further away view of jewelry) compared to new. Before, I wasn't able to get as close up to the item. I don't know how I did it this time but I am happy I got some decent pictures.

(first doesn't take up as much of the box, second is a much better "up close" view)





See what I mean now? :)

8 comments:

jordiegirl said...

Yes I see what you mean. The new pics are much better, you can see the detail of the jewellery more clearly. It's was worth taking the time to redo them.

I always keep my camera on fine quality as I like to have a decent photo. My camera is just a 6.3 megapixel Vivitar digital camera which can do close ups, sport, night, portrait etc settings. I can't be messing with any of those expensive cameras with too many buttons on them I just want to take a picture now!

beka said...

Oh, I love the newer pictures! Beautiful background thing it's on!
My camera is an 8mp that I keep on 8 all the time...and it's Kodak. Takes decent pics:)

Nancy (Jesse and Sophia's grandma) said...

Wow, the pictures are so much better and I feel for you because I know how time consuming the picture taking can be, but it was worth it.

cabin + cub said...

lovely pics! i have done that before.. took a bunch of photos on the wrong setting, and then having to re-do. ahhh...lesson learned. ;)

Jody McDowell said...

i think your photos are gorgeous, and you'd never know you didn't have an awesome camera! even a simple camera can get the job done as long as you use it well!

thestoryofkat said...

argh, i feel your pain!! even with a concentration in photography from college i get frustrated spending what is always too much time editing photos for the shop...it's so different from the landscape photos i was doing back then and the light is so much harder to control without a studio set-up. i did finally get a new camera which is helping a lot.

your photos look great though, you're so right about the close-ups!

Angela said...

That happened to me yesterday!! Except my pictures were way too big! Thank goodness Aubrey was home and he knew how to fix it- because it was hot outside and I would have lost it if I had to go back out there!

I think the pictures are great! BTW, I have worn my blue earrings everyday since I got them!! They are my new favorites!

Devon said...

The whole reason I don't keep up with Etsy so much is because I can never get quality pics and I hate the editing! It's frustrating! However, I have found that if you use the Flower (close up) setting... you need to hold your shutter button (is that what its called?) about half-way down until your camera focuses.... THEN push it all of the way down. That's what I do anyway and it works for me most of the time! (I only have a simple kodak... nothing fancy)!