Taking reference pictures

[Honzik]

Hi guys, i just seem to have won a acer aspire one notebook in a contest and i thougth i could model it because it's seems like a nice piece to try to model, and i was wondering if you guys have got any tips on how to make good reference photos from the top, left, reight and bottom sides with my camera? I can't find anything on the net so i thought hey i could make my own, but i really donon how to, any help very apretiated! Thanks

[SDA]

Honzik, grats on a new piece of hardware. I can tell you about taking reference pictures, but you look if that sounds good because I'm not doing this by any rules or anyone's advice. I just know this stuff because I work with camera almost 8 years.

First: Your pictures should be in high resolution, as high as possible (a 10-12MP camera should do). Next, for reference pictures you should take pictures from all angles of the object (in this case laptop). The more pictures you take, more details you will capture, but also your modeling time will increase (that is if you decide to model all the details). It always depends how many pictures you're gonna take from a density of the details. For this I will advise you take 3 pictures just from the top and 4-5 of the inner screen (if there are some cameras or speakers take 2 more). From the sides take 10-20 (again it depends how much detail you are trying to make on your model). Also from the front and back take 10-20 for all the input output sockets etc. From the bottom just take 4-6 or if you have some extra details there take more. Above (keyboard) you should take 15, just because there are a lot of buttons there (quite possibly you might have speakers here also).

Now, the best way to take these pictures is to focus camera on laptop in macro mode and when you do your pictures try to bring some light on the laptop so you don't use your flash and burst your images. You can do this by bringing a desk lamp (75-100W). Your images are going to be sharper if you let more light in, so my advice use 2 lights from different angels (about 60 degree will do). Also use something to shim it with when you're taking closeup pictures of details and sides of laptop. Make sure that you fill you're pictures with the details that you need (this depends on camera). If you have newer camera you can take closeup pictures (just few of them) on the sides. But if you have some crappy camera, every image is going to be more blurry on the out side then in the center of picture. If you want really clear images, the best way is to make more of them. And if you have a tripod of a kind it is going to make your work easier because your camera will be still, so you wont get hand shake distortion.

And last but not the least, if you model your laptop on a PC, don't take reference images, just look it and model it :)

I hope I didn't confused you with all this information. Use this well.

P.S. Btw, tell us what top you have :P, and tell me if you heave camera, witch one you have. Because I am in the market for one and I'm still deciding witch one to buy, tnx :))))

No more text...
Cheers ;)