CompuServe Thread

Howdy, I'm a photographer and read some of that article in Amazing Amiga, and I pretty much disagree with some of the things I read for shooting off the screen. Since I'm a professional and must shoot these graphics perfectly, I think I can offer some better suggestions for shooting off of the screen. First of all, you should be using a manual camera and not an automatic, unless it can be used manually. You'll be making some long exposures and an auto camera won't handle this. Also, in order to *completely* eliminate the distortion of the curved screen, you'll need a lens of at least 200mm, preferably 300mm; I myself use a 300mm F/4.5 Nikon lens. The article suggested something like an 85mm or 105mm as I recall. These will NOT eliminate the distortion, unless you have a flat screen monitor to begin with. Now, using a 300mm will require you to do a couple of things: first, you'll need a very steady tripod – no KMart special, that won't do. Second, you'll probably have to shoot from one room into another as the minimum focusing distance can sometime be between 8-13 feet! An extension bellows (which is what I use) can decrease the minimum distance to about six feet – good for an apartment! Film: you're better off shooting slide film because that has the best saturation of colors and you can make really good prints from the slides; you cannot make slides from prints. A low ISO is you're best bet because you do not want the grain of the film to compete with the pixels and monitor phosphors. A low speed film will keep the grain size to a minimum. I myself use either Professional Kodachrome 25 or Fujichrome Velvia 50, the latter being able to punch up the colors considerably. Kodachrome 25 has the smallest grain which is practically invisible. It also can give you the best color reproduction. The most important thing about shooting off the screen is that you have to put a filter on your camera to eliminate an inherent color cast that most, if not all, monitors give out. A red color-correcting filter (cc [ MORE ]