Sponsored by TWIST - Tablet Weavers International Studies & Techniques For analyzing small flat textiles or swatches, the best thing I've tried is to scan the item directly on the scanner bed in a high resolution. Then a good graphics program will allow you to zoom in on every thread. You can see *everything* more clearly, even better than with a strong magnifying glass. Of course this assumes that you have the piece in hand and that it's in good enough condition to handle.
I have a fairly good quality digital camera and it's very good for some things, but it needs the right lighting for a clear picture with true colours. It seems to need more light than the film camera. The built-in flash is pretty inadequate and I haven't found a way to take a picture through a glass case without light reflections. You can do some manipulating on the computer but you can't fix everything. I've found that I've become much more experimental with the digicam though -- you don't have to pay to develop the mistakes. Just delete them. Most of my pictures stay as JPEGs though (I view and use them on the computer) and very few get printed out. >> how good would a digital camera be for taking clear close-up pictures of, say, cathedral ceilings if I want to see, in perfect detail, carvings on the, oh, bosses? << Nancy, it all depends on whether or not the camera has a good optical zoom capability, how high the ceiling was, how much light was up there, and if you could see the bosses from the choir loft! ;) Hugs, Louisa (watching the cheeky midnight blue Stellar's jays eating the flower buds off the pear tree next door) Send private reply to Louisa Chadwick <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> ----------------------------------------------------------- To stop receiving tabletweaving (not tabletweaving-digest), send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the message: unsubscribe tabletweaving. To stop receiving tabletweaving-digest, see the end of a digest.
