Jumping on the dSLR Bandwagon

Christmas is coming, and you’re thinking about that new camera you’ve been wanting, right?  And maybe, just maybe, it’s time to get a dSLR so you don’t have to deal with those crappy compacts anymore, right?  Yep, no more excuses — it’s time for great photos.  Whoa, not so fast!

I’m not going to repeat what’s already been written hundreds of times about the pros and cons of point-and-shoots versus SLRs (do a quick search and you’ll find a pretty nice selection of helpful articles).  What I am going to do, however, is make one irrefutable statement for all you jewelry (and other small item) sellers out there:

Don’t spend your hard-earned money on a dSLR unless you have even more hard-earned money to invest in a good macro lens.

Yes, it’s that simple.  Compacts have some pretty nice macro features built-in.  SLRs do not (sorry, that little flower on your EOS Rebel is worthless).  Here’s one new term you need to learn:

Reproduction Ratio – The ratio of the size of an image projected on the camera sensor (or film) to the size of the subject itself.

So if you want to shoot something at “life size,” then you need a lens that gives you a reproduction ratio of 1.0 (sometimes denoted 1:1).  60 mm and 105 mm macro lenses from Canon and Nikon have reproduction ratios of 1:1.  If you buy a dSLR kit, it’ll probably come with a nice, all-purpose 18-55 mm lens.  Great lenses, they are, but with reproduction ratios in the 0.3 to 0.35 range (about 1/3 life-size).  What that means is that the full-size image of your 15 mm beads is only going to be about 5 mm.

Make sense?  Good.  Now you know what to ask your camera salesperson when you go shopping for that well-deserved gift for yourself.

Until next time … Happy Shooting!

Dealing with Etsy’s Huge Photos

I know I haven’t posted lately, but I’ve been quite busy in my other life.  Apologies to my faithful readers!  With that out of the way, here we go again…

The majority of Etsy sellers don’t seem at all happy about the “new and improved” photo sizes that go along with the “new and improved” wider pages.  There really aren’t any good solutions, other than the Etsy site adapting to its users’ needs rather than the other way around (but we all know that’s not going to happen!).  But there are a few things you can do to deal with it.

First, let me give you a summary of what’s happening.  I did a post a few months ago explaining how your photos should have a minimum width of 570 pixels.  Thankfully, that hasn’t changed.  But … while in the past you didn’t need to concern yourself too much with the height of your photos, now you do!  The biggest complaints seem to be from sellers who don’t like the idea of shoppers having to scroll down the page just to get to the bottom of the photo — and therefore  the description.  Etsy used to do a pretty nice job handling “vertically oriented” photos, but what the site now does (whether we want it to or not) is display the entire image at 570 pixels wide x whatever height you feed it.  Upload a 570 wide x 1200 high image and that’s exactly what will show on your main listing page.

Okay, so what?  Well, for anyone selling small items that photograph well in a landscape orientation, it’s no big deal.  But if your items (and therefore your photos) are much higher then they are wide, you’ve got a problem.  My wife (click here for her shop), for example, sells doll clothes.  If you look at any of her listings, you’ll see that she likes to have at least a few photos showing the entire outfit on one of her dolls.  Assuming that most folks like to see the doll upright as opposed to laying on a table, she really doesn’t have much choice but to have photos that are almost twice as high as they are wide.  She decided to go with…

Option 1 — Leave the photos as  is, and accept that viewers are going to have to scroll down to get to the description.

A lot of folks don’t like that idea, though.  Well, that’s why they’re called options, right?  Here’s what else you can do:

Option 2 — Include a lot of “wide” background in your photos of “tall” items, and crop your image to a 1:1 or wider aspect ratio.

Option 3 — Using your photo editor, place your “tall” image on a larger white canvas (the Photoshop term) with a 1:1 or wider aspect ratio.

Option 4 — Upload undersized photos (less than 570 pixels wide x a reasonable height) and let Etsy fill in the sides with that ugly taupe(?) color.

Hey, don’t shoot the messenger — I already told you that there weren’t any good options.  But I thought I’d at least give you some points to consider so you can decide what’s best for you.

Until next time … Happy Shooting!

Don’t Make a Rookie Mistake

Have you ever noticed an Etsy listing where, if you clicked on one of the photos to get a better view, the display size of that photo actually gets smaller?  I have — quite a few times.  In fact, I happened across a few forums lately where the author was asking “what’s wrong with my pictures?” or for advice about how to get “crisp, clear photos.”  And of course the nice folks who were trying to help gave the typical advice about using the “little flower setting” on the camera or building a light box or, my favorite, using image editing software.  It turns out the biggest problem was simply that the uploaded photos were just too darn small.  Rookie mistake, nasty consequences.

I wrote in some detail about image size here, but as a reminder, here’s what Etsy tells us:

The minimum size for your photo should be 570 pixels wide. We retain the aspect ratio of your original, so the height is variable.

We recommend using an image that is around 800-1000 pixels wide. Using an original image of this size lets shoppers use the Zoom button to see the larger image.

To illustrate how image size affects viewed image quality, I thought I would demonstrate using some simulations.  I chose examples that are noticeable enough, but not necessarily extreme (although there are a few of those out there).  Below you’ll find four separate sets of images, all set to Etsy’s 570 pixel default width.  The top photo in each set is how your “un-zoomed” Etsy image would look if your upload was 800 pixels wide (when zoomed, these top images would naturally get larger and still look great).  The bottom photo in each set shows the corresponding image if your upload was only 400 pixels wide (when “zoomed,” these images would get smaller but sharper).

So take a look, see what you think, and remember to pay attention to those image sizes!

Until next time … Happy Shooting!

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Crop ’til you Drop…

… those Worthless Pixels

A few weeks ago, in my “Making Sense of Megapixels” post, I touched briefly on cropping to help illustrate a point on image size.  This week, I’ll be talking about cropping images again, but this time from the aspect of modifying an image to not only be pleasing to the eye, but to best capture the true intent of the photo.

Thanks to Cheri (Etsy shop Swept From the Sea Designs) for not only allowing me to use one of her beautiful jewelry photos, but also for providing me with the original image to use for comparison.  Let’s work backwards and look at Cheri’s listing photo first.  Here it is:

Beautiful image, isn’t it?  It certainly is, but what what makes it so special?  Well, here are four things that Cheri did right when she cropped this image:

• The 1:1 aspect ratio (same size width and height) is perfect for the size of the subject and accessories.  Your images don’t always have to be 4×6 or 5×7.  Be adventurous!
• The placement of the charms in the image frame pretty closely follows the “rule of thirds.”  Remember. the centered shell, although pretty enough, is not the subject of the photo.  Don’t know what the “rule of thirds” is?  Well, you can patiently wait for me to cover it in a future post.  Or, if you need instant gratification, you can check Wikipedia (but only after you’re done reading this post).
• There’s just the right amount of background sand — enough to add interest, but not so much that the subject gets lost.
• The chain just gracefully disappears from the field of view.  There was really no need to try to capture more of it, and there’s plenty there to see what it really looks like.  Any more would be a waste.

Okay, so we saw the finished product, but what did the original look like?  Here, have a look:

It’s pretty nice, but …  Come on, what’s wrong with this picture?  Well, the first thing I see is that we’re not on a beach anymore, are we?  Looks more like sand in some kind on some kind of plate or tray, maybe placed on a kitchen table with something dark and distracting in the background.  Next, there’s just too much stuff that’s not the subject of the image.  Sometimes this works (when the background is just as interesting as the subject) but certainly not here!  Next, the shell and necklace are right in the darn middle of the frame, where they really don’t catch your eye.  And that chain — it just goes, and goes and keeps on going.

I do have one suggestion, and it depends on personal taste and the background of the page that you’re viewing.  Sometimes adding a border to a photo can completely change its look (sometimes for the better, sometimes not).  For comparison, I took Cheri’s image and added a 60 pixel black border.  I think it makes the shot a bit more dramatic, but you be the judge.

So hopefully you’ve seen just how important cropping can be.  Etsy only gives you so many pixels to work with, so don’t waste them on parts of your photos that really don’t belong there in the first place.  And don’t forget to set your camera to give you a large enough image size to work with.  Resizing smaller is easy.  Resizing larger is ugly!

Until next time … Happy Shooting!

Making Sense of Megapixels

I know I said I was planning to continue the lighting discussion, and I still am, but that’s going to have to wait until next time.  I’ve seen a lot of misinformation lately about digital camera sensor capabilities, and folks routinely throwing around the ole “you need a 10 MP camera or else” gibberish without really understanding what’s needed to get decent Etsy product photos.  I find that quite annoying, so here’s my take on the issue.

First things first – a quote from the Etsy help pages:

The minimum size for your photo should be 570 pixels wide. We retain the aspect ratio of your original, so the height is variable.

We recommend using an image that is around 800-1000 pixels wide. Using an original image of this size lets shoppers use the Zoom button to see the larger image.

We do not recommend using images that are much larger than 1000 pixels square, as files this large can be difficult to upload.

Now that we have a starting point, let’s go backwards to get there again and see if we can make sense out of these numbers, especially when it comes to how your photos might look online.  I’m going to use a shot I took at Biltmore Gardens in Asheville, NC as an example.

The first image below is the original size as it came out of my camera.  It’s 4,288 pixels wide and 2,848 pixels high.  If you have a calculator handy, multiply those two numbers together.  What do you get?  You should come up with 12,212,224 (that’s a little over 12 million pixels, or a little over 12 megapixels, or a little over 12 MP).  That is one very large photo, something that could easily be printed poster-size and still look remarkable.  Go ahead, click on the first image.  You should get a magnifying glass.  Click again.  Now you should get some scroll bars that let you see the entire image at its full resolution.

Well, for the purposes of my Etsy shop, there were two things that I needed to do.  First, I really didn’t need all those pixels to get a good image on my (or your) computer monitor.  Second, I wasn’t all that crazy about the overall photo anyway, so I wanted to get rid of some of the uninteresting junk.

So for my next step,  I cropped the original so it could be printed as an 8 x 10.  What I got as a result is shown below.  The only thing I did by cropping was get rid of unwanted parts of the photo, and my remaining image was 2,143 pixels wide x 1,714 pixels high.  Okay, time for more fun math — Multiply these two numbers together, and you get (hopefully) 3,673,102 pixels (about 3.7 MP).  Right?  But let’s say that this is the image I want to use in my shop.  Well, if we look up above at what the Etsy folks tell us, it’s still too big.  But what if I don’t want to crop anymore because I like the way it looks?  Well, I’ll just have to resize it, just like you can do with whatever photo editing software you happen to be using.  But I’m going to ignore the Etsy rules (just a little) and resize the image to a width 1,500 pixels instead of the recommended 1,000 pixels.  Keeping the aspect ratio the same (still 8 x 10, or more accurately 10 x 8), my height now comes out to be 1,200.  More math — 1,500 x 1,200 equals 1,800,000 (1.8 MP), right?  Right!  Now take a look at the image below.  Click on it and then use the magnifier to zoom.  Now really take a close look.  See any problems with the resolution?  I hope not, or this could be really embarrassing!  And what was the resolution of this one?  1.8 MP?  Do they even make cameras with resolutions that low anymore?

Okay, let’s do one more.  I cropped again, but didn’t resize, and ended up with what you see below.  This time, I was left with an image 954 pixels wide x 763 pixels high.  One last time, do the math and what do you get?  Hint — 727,902 pixels.  That’s less than 1 Megapixel!  And one last time click on the image and take a close look?  Decent photo?  You bet, and not even 1 MP in size.

So what does all that mean to you.  Well, a few things…

1. You don’t need a 12 MP camera to get great Etsy shots.
2. But if you happen to have a 6, or 8, or 10 MP or larger camera, use it to your advantage.  Take large photos from a little farther back or with a little less zoom (unless you’re trying a special technique), crop judiciously and resize if necessary.
3. Look at your Etsy listing photos the way a shopper might.  Click and zoom.  Make sure you’re happy with the way they look, and if not, try again.
4. And finally… the next time a big box store salesperson tells you you need the next-generation 16 MB camera, you can now confidently and politely tell him that he’s full of crap.

Next post about indoor lighting (I promise).  Until then…

Happy Shooting!