posted on February 5, 2006 07:03:09 AM
I have a few postcards to sell on eBay at some point. Today I was looking at one, and the seller pointed out that the black border around the card *and the translucent plastic sleeves on corners* weren't part of the card but were there to position the card correctly for photographing (or scanning?) It sounds like a good idea; I couldn't even see plastic corners but it occurs to me that this would hold the card in place while scanning but wouldn't be much help in photographing. Or am I wrong?
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posted on February 5, 2006 07:08:14 AM
I don't know if I qualify as "big tine" but I suppose if the sleeves were clean it would be ok. I personally don't use sleeves when I scan because I want the viewer to see the card exactly as it is and not have to explain, like the example you cited, what the extraneous lines in the scan are.
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posted on February 5, 2006 11:36:56 AM
I read his message as meaning he used those little translucent corners people use in photo albums. The picture itself showed no evidence of being in a plastic sleeve totally.
Anyway, when I go to selling these cards, I'm going to try that with my husband's scanner. Might be easier than trying to take good straight-edged photos.
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roadsmith, just put the card up against the corners in the scanner. unless your scanner doesn't have straight edges in the screening bed, which i highly doubt, lol, you're going to get pictures with "straight edges."
posted on February 5, 2006 01:56:46 PM
I don't put mine up to the corner because I want to show the imperfections of all the edges and putting the cards up to the corners crops a little off. It's hard getting them straight all the time. I haven't seen the little corner thingies but think it would be a PIA because even standard sized PC's are not all exactly the same size. Would you mount the corner thingie to the cover?
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posted on February 5, 2006 02:25:32 PM
? since when does the scanner crop the edges of cards? here's one - admittedly not a stunning card - put up to the top edge of the scanner. and hence it is "straight," how could it not be?
allows cropping in irfanview on the "other 3" sides, allows any imperfections to show, etc. i just can't imagine why plastic corners would be needed to allow for a full scan.
posted on February 5, 2006 02:47:42 PM
I'm not sure about your scanner but mine as a factory defult setting automatically crops items that are scanned. I think that may be what neglus is talking about. It is a feature that can be changed though, so all that needs to be done is turn off the "auto crop" feature.
They say your memory's the second thing to go, I just can't remember what the first thing is.
posted on February 5, 2006 03:11:06 PM
I probably am too picky - my scanner can auto crop too but I don't use that setting. I like to show a little of the scan bed on all 4-sides because there is a little bit of the edge that is not picked up when the pc is butted against the corner and the side:
This first image is scanned right next to the corner and edges:
This second scan is scanned away from the edge:
I scan four images at once and crop.,rotate and compress in IRFAN:
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posted on February 5, 2006 05:39:49 PM
I agree scanning off the edge of the bed is better. In your second scan the buyer could get a much better idea of the overall condition of the card. The first scan would tend to make one think it had perfect corners at the top.
They say your memory's the second thing to go, I just can't remember what the first thing is.
posted on February 5, 2006 10:05:44 PM
About scanning vs. photographing postcards. My husband and I each have a home office. His is about 40 steps from my desk. I guess I could set up a bunch of the postcards to scan at one time, put on a CD, then take to my office to edit etc. Just seems like more work than taking them all upstairs where there's more light and I can watch the deer and coyotes while I use my camera. I dunno. I guess I'll experiment with both.
You all have been very helpful with this; thanks!
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posted on February 5, 2006 10:15:14 PM
Why waste time messing with hubby's scanner? You already know you're gonna wind up upstairs with a camera so you can keep an eye on your pets
If Murphy's law is correct, everything East of the San Andreas Fault will slide into the Atlantic
posted on February 5, 2006 10:24:28 PM
Roadsmith, forget wasting the CD's. What you need is a jump drive. They plug into your usb port and you can copy your files to them. It is as easy as using a floppy.
The drive is "plug and play", only about 2 inches long.
You'll probably pay for it within a month, if not a week.
They are extremely cheap, small, convenient to use.
posted on February 5, 2006 11:06:55 PM
LtRay, you are right on, I use mine all the time between computers at home and away. Got my brother-in-laws hooked on them too along with my mother-in-law. Now my Mominlaw is promoting them to all her friends. Fabulous gizmo to have. Since I have everyone locked out of my PC on the network jump drive makes for easiest transfers when needed the way I have my network set.
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Can't touch this! uh huh, uh huh.
posted on February 6, 2006 12:08:04 AM
Thanks Vintage, for the tip about aligning against the top and bottom edges. I have an ancient (but really fast) Epson scanner which in auto-mode scans, crops (sometimes a little too much), names and color adjusts 3 horizontal postcards at a time. I also use my Mom's Microtek ScanMaker 4800 and scan 4 cards in the same configuration Neglus shows, but have set my scanner to automatically crop in four equal quadrants. I'm not nearly as steady as Neglus and when I scan 4 at a time they are usually skewed. I tried aligning them against the edge as you suggested and it works great! Even though the true edges are often not seen in many of my scans, I have never had a complaint, even a 'mint' card is described as having some corner and edge wear, and flaws are explicitely given in the description. Hopefully my scans will not be so skewy now!
posted on February 6, 2006 04:23:48 AM
Roadsmith - Obviously there is no one "right" way to do it. Pixiamom and I go round and round about this - neither one of us will ever change our minds and we shake our heads at the other's clouded vision LOL
I did an experiment with photos this summer and the results were ok. If you aren't picky about cutting off a view of half of the edges (barb to Pixiamom and VintageP) then you probably will like the photo results Didn't you recently purchase a light tent? I wonder how that would work. My problem with the digicam was consistent lighting and I wasn't enamored enough with the process to invest in lighting and tripod equipment.
One idea is to have hubbie scan for you (while you watch your critters). My DH scanned over 100 postcards for me last night while watching the superbowl. He likes to do it! Then copy to your zip drive (they are very cheap) and doctor them up on your pc.
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the other thing i've been secretly wondering is, why do you want to take pictures of the postcards when you can scan them? photographing them is much more labor intensive and the results can sometimes look skewed and amateurish - do an ebay postcard search and you'll probably see examples of peoples' fingers on the edge of cards, postcards sitting on a little wire stand with a blurry picture of the actual card, etc.
imho, there are some things scanners are ideally suited for. and postcards are one of them. i've never taken a photograph of a postcard that could hold a candle to a scan of a postcard.
and you're welcome, pixiamom. the edges of scanners are a wonderful invention nobody has ever accused me of not truly representing the card (dig at neglus, smiles). in fact, if they say anything about condition, they tend to wax ecstatic and say what great shape the card's in or how it's even better looking in person.
i would say my biggest mistake with pictures was using ebay's hosting service for as long as i did. slowly converting everything over to images stored at my domain, although it's going to be a lengthy process.
and thanks to those of you who told me a few times that my pictures hosted by ebay were horrible - you were right!
I'm one of the major proponents of using a digital camera, instead of a scanner. I've used both methods... and the camera is much faster... with very little sacrifice in quality (sometimes even improved quality). Here's a link to my eBay guide explaining the method I use:
posted on February 6, 2006 09:56:32 AM
I scan about 100 cards/hour while I surf the boards (including upload to Vendio time). Try beating that with a camera!
posted on February 6, 2006 10:00:25 AM
If you read my guide... you'll notice my time per picture is about 10-15 seconds. That means... even at the slow end... in an hour I can do about 240 (I've actually done 300 in an hour before...) So... yes, I can definately beat a scanner with my photo setup. And of course, the batch processing in Photoshop elements is simply computer processing time... not man-hour time. While it's processing them, I can take another couple hundred pictures. Trust me... a camera is faster!
posted on February 6, 2006 10:22:50 AM
a camera may be faster, not really convinced of that, but your camera pictures of ads show the distortion in perspective typical with the use of a camera (i think it's a 24 or 28 mm lens that corrects that?) and you've got all that black space around the image. it's hard to see the actual image. scanned and cropped, it would only show the ad - what you're selling. scanned and cropped, you could also shows close-ups of graphics, which i assume is part of what you're selling. just my $0.02 worth.
Yes, you do occassionaly get a little of what's called "curvature". Because a camera's lens is not flat, but curved... you get a little bit of a perspective bend to the picture. However, this is VERY small, and has never been an issue to any of my customers.
Here's some random samples of my photos:
You can see the type of curvature I was tallking about illustrated in these pictures. It really is very minor, and I haven't had any complaints or questions about them. As for the space around the images... yes, I could crop more... but I prefer to show the background so they can see the edges more clearly.
Finally, another thing I really like about cameras, is they show creases MUCH better than scanners do. A scanner will push the paper object flat, sometimes hiding creases, folds, tears, etc... Using a copy stand, you can just set the item on it, and take the picture of it, without changing the nature of it. Hence, the creases show up in your picture.
Honestly, there are pros and cons to both methods... but I'd stack my photos against scanned images any day. I doubt any improvement in quality to my photos would bring in more sales... and I know the speed factor lets me list 2-3x as many in the same time period.
[ edited by eauctionmgnt on Feb 6, 2006 10:47 AM ]
posted on February 6, 2006 10:49:43 AM
p.s. Keep in mind... the total editing time (taking the picture, renameing the file, rotating, watermarking and cropping) for each one of these pictures I've shown is just 10-15 seconds. Can you beat that with a scanner?
posted on February 6, 2006 11:25:31 AM
I have experimented with both and I don't really think you can beat the camera for time. Quality is another matter. I am sorry eauction but I personally would not be happy with using images like the ones you posted. Perhaps it doesn't make any difference in sales though.
What becomes VERY clear to me is that no one's mind is being changed! LOL. Pixiamom (my sister) and I just got off the phone AGAIN without convincing the other that our respective method is the best and ONLY way to do things.(She just won't listen to me - hardheaded lil sis! )
Roadsmith - I would suggest experimenting.
I will say that one of the highest prices I received for a card last fall was on a relist of a card I photographed last summer. You just never know!
I meant to ask... did you ever end up getting that testrite copy stand? I remember you telling me awhile ago that you placed a bid on an auction. Just curious if you ever hooked it up and played with it.
By the way, your pictures are probably the best quality I've seen... so I'm not surprised mine come in sub-par in your book. I agree completely with you about showing the edges (which is one reason why I like using my camera). One thing I have noticed... is that curvuture seems to be less on the smaller items I photograph. These pictures are mostly of 8.5x11 sized ads. I would be willing to bet that post cards would photograph with much less curvature, simply due to their smaller size.
Other ways to increase quality is to use a higher resolution setting on the camera and use less JPEG compression.
posted on February 6, 2006 11:47:11 AMp.s. Keep in mind... the total editing time (taking the picture, renameing the file, rotating, watermarking and cropping) for each one of these pictures I've shown is just 10-15 seconds.
posted on February 6, 2006 01:48:48 PM
Go getem fLuff
I myself prefer a camera. But that's just what works best for me. The camera is much faster and I get better picture quality. Also if I need to take a extreme close up picture of a stamp I can get superior quality over a scanner.
Took a minute to do a test.
Scanner with cover in center of bed.
Scanner with cover on edge of bed (note choped top edge).
Picture with digital camera with 20X optical zoom lens.
Now, holding the cover in my hand and comparing it with the above images the one taken with the camera more closely matchs the real thing.
If you do chose to do your post cards with a camera here's the setup I would use. Make up a template with a couple of registration marks on it. This will keep your post cards located in the exact same location each time and keep them square in your picture. Mount your camera overhead. Mounting height will depend on wether or not your camera has optical zoom or not. Do not let the camera go into digital zoom as picture quality will greatly suffer. Now with your camera mounted overhead place your background template on the table and square it up in the view on the camera. Now for lighting get two cheap aluminum housing light fixtures, the kind that have a sqring clamp on them and get two of the lowest wattage soft white bulbs you can find. Cover the housing's with a layer of thin white cloth, this makes a good diffuser for the light and prevents "hot spots" in your pictures. Mount the light's on opposite sides of the template at about a 45 degree angle. With the clamp lights you can simply set a chair on either side and clamp them to a chair. With this setup you should be able to do several hundred cards a hour, basically as fast as you can click the button on the camera and swap out the cards on your background template. But it's a personal preferance and you may find a scanner works best for you.
Best advice would be to just experiment and see which is faster for you and has the best results. Remember that everyone who is posting suggestions here is probably using a different camera or scanner than the next poster so results vary. Your scanner may produce better results than my camera. But on the other hand my camera may produce better results than your scanner. Everyones different equipment will produce different end results. Experiment, have fun and get those cards sold!!!
They say your memory's the second thing to go, I just can't remember what the first thing is.
[ edited by mikes4x4andtruckrepair on Feb 6, 2006 01:52 PM ]
posted on February 6, 2006 02:15:10 PM
Those are nice Mike. I must say that I would use your image - but you have to have the equipment. When you say "Mount your camera overhead"...well I don't have a camera mount so it would amount to me standing overhead trying not to shake very much (hard to do when a kitten is trying to play with the camera strap) LOL I just tried taking pics again and it was a DISASTER!
eauction - I didn't win that auction and when NONE of my listings with photo scans sold I decided if it ain't broke I'm not going to fix it! LOL One did sell later on a relist for a nice price but I just haven't felt like making the change. I might play around with it again this summer. I did get some rather nice images in full sun by placing my postcards on a lawnchair. I steadied my arms as I stood over them with the back of the chair (that was before new kitten)
I can imagine that there is more distortion with an ad and it must be hard to fit some of them on a scanner bed. I scan 4 postcards at once so I get 4 times more output with a scan than you do - little things like that can add up and I can see why you use a camera.
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posted on February 6, 2006 02:16:37 PM
LTRAY - can you please tinyurl that humongous one up there - it's making this thread impossible to read! TIA
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Vintage has a haunted postcard!
nobody has ever accused me of not truly representing the card (dig at neglus, smiles). in fact, if they say anything about condition, they tend to wax ecstatic and say what great shape the card's in or how it's even better looking in person.
I agree completely with you about showing the edges (which is one reason why I like using my camera). One thing I have noticed... is that curvuture seems to be less on the smaller items I photograph. These pictures are mostly of 8.5x11 sized ads. I would be willing to bet that post cards would photograph with much less curvature, simply due to their smaller size.
