www.maureenalbright.com
This is my AV technique of making 35mm slides from a computer monitor
screen Robert and I have been photographing the computer screen for our AV slide
work since about 1995. I produced slides for my LRPS AVs (Dolphin Dream &
New Age Henge) from the screen mixing them with some straight slides. We have
always made sure we have non Trinitron (or any "tron") monitors
with the computer. (The Tron monitors are excellent as monitors, ..... but show
lines in your slides) The bigger the screen size you use the better the results,
we have found.
My SLR camera is placed on the tripod, I use a spirit
level to make sure my camera is level in all planes and I also check the monitor
is as level as far as possible. I sometimes even check the sides of the camera
are parallel with the screen.
Darken the room, we have a roller blind which
has blackout and I also pull the curtains as this gives sufficient darkness if
I want to photograph during the day. You then have no problems with reflections
either.
We've tried several types of slide films and have no particular preference
as this may depend on the AV subject and effect we wish to achieve.
Camera
settings are usually about 1 second at f8. This can vary according to the
image you are photographing. I sometimes even let the camera choose and try the
automatic setting!
I pull down a grid (Photoshop - View/show/grid)
over my image which also gives you a check about having the image level (useful
if your horizon tilts or you may need to try to fade areas). Although we also
now both have a grid screen fitted in our cameras, so I no longer have excuses
for 'wonky' horizons!
Stacking in layers in Photoshop
When I have
lots of images ready to transfer to slides,(usually about 36) I take all the images
together in horizontal format, making each image a new layer on top of the first
one. As each image layer is low resolution and size, the total file size is quite
moderate.
Landscape format
Everything is resized down to the following
:
Choose a width to height proportion that will give slide dimensions (you
may have to crop or readjust a print's dimensions)
width : 982 pixels
height 667 pixels
This gives good slide size proportions.
Different screen
resolutions will give different pixel sizes to work from.
If you wish you
may start with a greyscale background new image of 72 dpi, 982 pixels by 667 pixels.
You could use this base to create your test card or use Photoshop's rainbow filter
with black and white.
Stacking.
Then when your slide 1 image
is ready and resized, use Photoshop's move tool to transfer your slide image as
a new layer above base greyscale, (hold the shift key at the same time and your
new layer will automatically drop into place).
Then resize image2 for slide
two making another new third layer. Your images will be "stacked up"
all conveniently ready to take. I often stack up 36 ready to finish off one slide
film at a time. The stack can be saved and a whole AV can be stored as quite a
small file for an emergency backup. I like to keep a large size file of the original
scan as I sometimes use an image for a Camera Club / Photographic Society print
or slide competition later.
When I am ready to take the slide off the
screen in the darkened room, I use the Photoshop full screen mode without any
options or status bar showing, press tab key to hide all tools and you will be
left with only your top layer image with surrounded by black. ** PARK the mouse
out of sight bottom left** .........very easy to forget that and we've even seen
the cursor on some competition slides!
When you have set up and taken a slide
of this layer press f7 this brings up only the layer palette. So I find when I
am set up taking a slide film, leaning over the tripod in a darkened room, I only
need to be able to reach the f7 key and my camera remote. Then you have brought
up the layers palette click on the eye icon and the top layer is switched off
showing your next slide image. As it is already in the frame and the camera and
tripod have been set up for image one, you only need to switch off f7 and go back
to your full screen mode to take the next slide. I can quickly work through a
whole film using this stacked layers technique.
I have also found you can
also use the wheel on your mouse in the software ACD See and scroll through
slides at full screen size with a black background, to photograph the screen,
but I prefer using Photoshop, as I find I have more control. I also find for AV
work, I can use the opacity slider in Photoshop to judge an interesting dissolve
effect and if I should adjust or flip a slide to improve the dissolve. In the
early days, we adjusted the camera setting for various parts of the image, (lots
of tilting the tripod and camera to get readings etc) also setting up greyscale
cards, taking bracket exposures, and I even sent some files away to be read to
a film reader at a bureau My poor dolphins came back in very strange colours and
the sea varied from grey to green. I had made the mistake of not having my files
calibrated by the local bureau first. I also worried my slides would be very pixelated
etc. Usually pixelation can be seen on the screen if the monitor image which is
being photographed has strange combinations of percentage image size. We try to
always take at 100% whenever possible. (or fractions such as 50% 75%) but
never strange %s e.g. 72% etc. I was pleased when one of my AVs was shown at the
Eurofest in France , to be approached afterwards by several European AV workers
who asked my technique for taking my slides off the screen. Unfortunately it wasn't
to compliment the high quality of the AV.
Maureen Albright
2001 |