Photography

Having good photographs of your old toy collection is important to the collecting experience. Good photos are useful for insurance claims, EBAY auctions, and collector correspondence. Also, they document your toy collection for posterity. This article offers some ideas on how to get better photographs of old toys and how to use digital photography in today's Internet world.

Cameras
If you plan to use your pictures to send by Email, or to use on Internet auctions, get yourself a digital camera. It is too time consuming and costly to take prints and then digitize them on a scanner. With a digital camera, you do not incur the costs of having the prints done - most of which will not be useable anyway. With a digital camera, you can take huge numbers of images and sort them out and improve them on your computer (of course you will also have to get yourself a computer).

The resolution needed is really not very important for Internet use since sufficient bandwidth is currently not available to send high resolution pictures that can have file sizes in the multi megabytes. A 2.2 mega pixel or higher camera is fine. Close focusing capability is important. Make sure the camera can focus, either automatically or manually, down to 6 cm or closer.

All of the cameras will have a means of downloading your images into your computer. Those with "docking" cradles and a USB interface are the most convenient but all will have a working system.

Lighting
All digital cameras will have a built-in flash - turn it off! These poor flash units are only useful in emergencies and for sunny day shadow fill-in. If they are used for toy photography, the results will be disappointing. The pictures will be flat and have a harsh shadow behind the toy.

Use either a separate incandescent lighting system like the one shown here ***photo of lighting system ***, or use an external flash that can be positioned to give and indirect lighting effect by bouncing the flash's light off a white ceiling or photographic umbrella. See illustration. It will take some experimentation to get the results you want. Just remember that the objective is to diffuse your light to soften shadows and to create a primary, or stronger, and a secondary, or weaker, light source if you can.

You can use natural, sometimes called "available" light for your photos to good effect but consistency is the problem since the sun's angle is constantly changing and clouds come and go but give it a try.


These two photographs were taken by the same photographer, Judith Lile, one year and much experimentation apart. The ringmaster was photographed using a built-in flash and he was placed too close to a background. The result was a flat, lifeless image.	After some practice, Judith took this photo of a farmer. Her lighting consisted of two inexpensive incandescent lights positioned high and to the right and left of the subject. The resulting shadows are diffused. The subject looks very natural - you aren't aware of lighting. Shadows are soft. A very nice toy portrait wouldn't you agree?

Positioning
Try to find enough space so you can position your subject well away from a plane background. Use props to good effect. And get close! I see too many toy photos with tiny images of the subject of interest but great images of the table or sofa they are on. If your photos aren't good enough then you aren't close enough.

This photo of the Ted Toy-ler Marching Squad illustrates a few principles of composition and lighting. The lights are positioned with a strong light high and to the subject's front and a fill light high to the subject's right. This gives a nice 3-D effect. The frame is filled with the subject who is positioned slightly to the left of center to provide a space to move into to suggest motion. A nice medium blue paper background was used. The paper extends 3-4 feet in back of the subject which produces the darker background effect in the upper portions of the photograph.

Here, two Ted Toy pieces are working together to make a more interesting composition. The background material for both of these photos is photo paper rolled out over a dining room table. The paper curves away from the subjects which produces an increasingly darker background as you look higher in the photograph.


In this photo, Judith experiments with back lighting the subject. The addition of circus prop adds interest to her clown composition.	Judith made this fine portrait of a nice Schoenhut clown. Looks like it was made in a studio doesn't it? Nice and close with lighting positioned high and slightly behind the subject. Front lighting used to fill. Good 3-D effect.

Tripods
Digital cameras aren't very fast. That is, their "shutter" speeds are fairly slow. So for best results, use a tripods to steady the camera during shooting. You will notice a great improvement in image quality particularly in close-ups. A good, sturdy tripod will cost you about $100-$150 and well worth the price.

File Sizes
If you are going to make prints of your photos, you will need to take your original images at the highest resolution possible with your camera. This should be at least 2.2 mega pixels to produce an 8 1/2 by 11 print. You should use no compression - that is, use bit mapped (bmp) quality mode. You can derive smaller, jpg compressed, files from the bmp files. A good image editor such as PhotoEditor, Corel, PictureIt!, and one of my favorites, IrfanView (a free download). In IrfanView, you can size the image easily and precisely to make it ready for Web publication or Email.

So, give it a try.