CitizenBBN
05-04-2014, 11:55 AM
OK, I need a camera for work. Taking pictures of everything from glassware to furniture to firearms. Almost all of it will be indoors. We've put up diffusion lights, etc. but the big challenge I have with the current camera is white balance/lighting. Some white stuff turns out bluish, stuff is dark, etc.
The camera I have now isn't super quality, but it has a very special feature - it reads barcodes. I've talked about this before on here, and Pedro sent me to a great possible solution, which is a higher quality camera but one that is programmable so we can still use it for inventory without manually attaching 1-2 thousand photos every other week (yep, that many). The Samsung Galaxy cameras have Android OS, which means I can write apps for them to properly name the images and even send them over wifi potentially.
Now the question, how much camera do I need, or put another way how big a step up in handling brightness/lighting/white balance is a "real" camera versus a $200-400 one? They have two basic lines of Galaxy camera, one is a $200-400 type that seems "good" but is still just a family vacation type camera. The other is an Android version of their NX cameras, which is a mirrorless CCD, 20 mp with interchangeable lenses. About $1,300 with a 18-55mm lens.
Is it worth it to spend $1K more? I need good quality photos but remember the people using it aren't photographers and won't be obsessive about settings. I can get some compliance on that, but it is in the end a production environment, we don't have all day to mess with staging and lighting. Stuff is shot against a curtain backdrop (black usually) and I can set up lighting around the area, but ideally we do an item every 1-3 minutes.
What I have now is lots of fussing though b/c the camera can't handle the white balance/quality issues well. I need one that can auto adjust as well as possible and give me a good clear pic with decent color accuracy. Doesn't have to be perfect, but people need to see what they're buying.
here are the two cameras in question:
http://www.samsung.com/us/photography/galaxy-camera
Other than the one we use these are the only ones I've found that are programmable/barcode capable, so it's a limited set of choices. I'm leaning to spending the big bucks but only if I get enough bang for it.
Point of reference -- my Galaxy 4 phone camera shoots a better picture than the camera we're using for inventory IMO, so anything SHOULD be a step up in quality. A big factor is people holding still and images blurring too, so something that can take a good pic on a fast shutter is big and I know that's mostly lighting dependent and I'm going to work on that in the setup
The camera I have now isn't super quality, but it has a very special feature - it reads barcodes. I've talked about this before on here, and Pedro sent me to a great possible solution, which is a higher quality camera but one that is programmable so we can still use it for inventory without manually attaching 1-2 thousand photos every other week (yep, that many). The Samsung Galaxy cameras have Android OS, which means I can write apps for them to properly name the images and even send them over wifi potentially.
Now the question, how much camera do I need, or put another way how big a step up in handling brightness/lighting/white balance is a "real" camera versus a $200-400 one? They have two basic lines of Galaxy camera, one is a $200-400 type that seems "good" but is still just a family vacation type camera. The other is an Android version of their NX cameras, which is a mirrorless CCD, 20 mp with interchangeable lenses. About $1,300 with a 18-55mm lens.
Is it worth it to spend $1K more? I need good quality photos but remember the people using it aren't photographers and won't be obsessive about settings. I can get some compliance on that, but it is in the end a production environment, we don't have all day to mess with staging and lighting. Stuff is shot against a curtain backdrop (black usually) and I can set up lighting around the area, but ideally we do an item every 1-3 minutes.
What I have now is lots of fussing though b/c the camera can't handle the white balance/quality issues well. I need one that can auto adjust as well as possible and give me a good clear pic with decent color accuracy. Doesn't have to be perfect, but people need to see what they're buying.
here are the two cameras in question:
http://www.samsung.com/us/photography/galaxy-camera
Other than the one we use these are the only ones I've found that are programmable/barcode capable, so it's a limited set of choices. I'm leaning to spending the big bucks but only if I get enough bang for it.
Point of reference -- my Galaxy 4 phone camera shoots a better picture than the camera we're using for inventory IMO, so anything SHOULD be a step up in quality. A big factor is people holding still and images blurring too, so something that can take a good pic on a fast shutter is big and I know that's mostly lighting dependent and I'm going to work on that in the setup