Digital cameras and BVE

LAST EDITED ON Jun-27-03 AT 09:56 AM (EDT)

I would like to buy a digital camera,mostly for making BVE objects.It would be a basic one;2MB and basic adjustments.Before I do I want to know a little about using the images for BVE .I especially am concerned about color and how to get the best color conversion into 8bit depth.Im anxious to hear any advice or tips from experienced users on any aspects of digital images relating to BVE use.Thanks

BTW the camera I like is a Fuji Finepix 2650

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RE: Digital cameras and BVE, Stooopid_person, Jun-27-03, 09:53 AM, (1) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, smikes, Jun-27-03, 10:14 AM, (2) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, Stooopid_person, Jun-27-03, 11:07 AM, (3) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, TomBeevers2000, Jun-27-03, 11:42 AM, (4) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, smikes, Jun-27-03, 11:52 AM, (5) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, Stooopid_person, Jun-27-03, 09:48 PM, (6) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, Routemaster J, Jun-28-03, 07:39 AM, (7) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, mailer_diablo, Jun-28-03, 10:00 AM, (8) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, smikes, Jun-28-03, 04:04 PM, (9) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, NathanWhitington, Jun-28-03, 04:54 PM, (10) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, chris_rogers, Jul-01-03, 05:27 PM, (11) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, NathanWhitington, Jul-02-03, 08:19 AM, (12) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, smikes, Jul-02-03, 09:28 AM, (13) RE: Digital cameras and BVE, Tim Frost, Jul-02-03, 11:26 AM, (14)

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> My experience in converting images from the net has
>been that if I resave a jpg as a gif image and then as
>256.bmp it looks better than converting directly from
>jpg,Huh? Isn't it the same, you say from .jpg to .bmp, but converting directly is also from .jpg to .bmp!

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I edited that out SP.It just confused my question.

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What do you mean by conversion to 8bit? You mean 256 colours? Well, you would need a image editor for that as the cameras save in .jpg normally.

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My own digital camera has the eyehole higher than the lens so when it looks to you like you're dead streight on to take a pic for a texture you're not. There is an LCD screen but it drains batteries. BTW would reccomend a cam which can use rechargables I found this out the hard way. My camera has several resolutions, I take most things at 640x480 as they're meant to be for reference (i.e. - so I know where things are) unless they're for artistic quality in which case i'll upp the res.--
Tom Beevers
http://brj.rr.nu

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Ill use MS Paint to edit. I expect thats good enough for my purpose.

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> Ill use MS Paint to edit. I expect thats good enough
>for my purpose. The problem with Paint is that it doesn't save the colours correctly. E.g. Light Grey(128,128,128) becomes purplish when save in 256 colours.

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Use PaintShop Pro!! It does a custom pallete!Anyway I use a Konica digicam and its great It has optical zoom, takes movies and has a LCD screen! I use NiMH rechrageables (you know those you get free with a charger thoses Green Uniross ones)! It last for ages!! It comes with a 8MB SD memory card. It can also use MMC too!Make sure you buy one with good quality lenses, as a Physicist who knows about optics and focal length, its improratant! This is a camera that a Physicist recommends... It costs £250, the Fujifinepix costs about £100-£150?Anyway mine also takes different picture sizes too, default 1200*1600!!! (I tone this down to 640*480 formy cab views etc...)Check out manufactureres websites for manuals, I know Konica does it. Choose wisely...

Joshim,
currently constructing the DLR Route for BVE & Oxford Street BUS ROUTE! Check out my website http://joshimsbveroutes.gamehorizons.net/

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LAST EDITED ON Jun-28-03 AT 10:07 AM (EDT)

>It costs £250, the Fujifinepix costs about £100-£150?
>I've got one for $100 over here. Has the features you have mentioned above.Got a free 32 MB memory card as a bonus with the 8 MB memory card included.

http://koti.mbnet.fi/rogorox/

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Your right,it doesnt seem to do a good job converting 24bit to 8 bit color.I was exploring the free program IrfanView and it seems to do a very good job of that.Maybe not as good as PaintPro,but its free.
Any opinions on that program?

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>> Ill use MS Paint to edit. I expect thats good enough
>>for my purpose.
>
>The problem with Paint is that it doesn't save the colours
>correctly. E.g. Light Grey(128,128,128) becomes purplish
>when save in 256 colours. MS Paint usually saves with a general pallete of 256 colours, rather than adaptive, which other major graphic editing software gives one the option of using. The software I would advise people to avoid using is Adobe Photodeluxe as it seems to decide for you what you think it should be, so even if I selected it to save an adaptive 256 colour bitmap, if it has 16 colours or less, it will save it as a 16 colour bitmap and a poor quality one too, which is why I now use Ulead Photo Express SE.PSP is good, whatever floats your boat really.--
Nathan Whitington

http://members.aol.com/nwhitington

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I find ULead ImagePals 2 Image Editor is quite a good, simple all round image editing program for digital images.Don't know where you might get hold of it, though. I got it free with a scanner ages ago.It does a lovely line in optimised, custom palettes for exporting to 256 colour bitmaps though.I use a Jenoptik JDC 1.3 LCD, which is a pretty good budget camera. It has an LCD screen, 1.3MP resolution, records video (320x240) and audio (not exactly CD quality ) But it has a USB interface and pretends to be a disk drive which is useful. None of that sill TWAIN download rubbish!

Chris Rogers.
http://homepages.tesco.net/~ChrisM.Rogers

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I use a similar setup to you Chris, my camera can also behave like a hdd, which is useful as you said. I have a burning question for you camera/scanner folks, I have an older digicam (one of three ) and before I lent my software disk to someone who didn't return it, I used to be able to download the pictures off the camera. The camera software was called FotoBee, and despite my efforts looking for it I can't find it. Does anyone know where I could obtain it from and what drivers to use, sorry for the slight OT post.--
Nathan Whitington

http://members.aol.com/nwhitington

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LAST EDITED ON Jul-02-03 AT 09:31 AM (EDT)

I've been playing around the last couple days with the free
image editing (and much more) program IrfanView.I'm sure some of you know of it.It's easy to use and has many great features.Check it out.
http://www.irfanview.com/

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I got my Sanyo Digicam (1.3MP) for $40 on ebay, including 32+32+16MB of SmartMedia cards.I can't be happier with it... it takes 1280x1024x16 pictures which is more than sufficient for BVE and I can take about 410 pictures on the memory I have. Only limitation is that it can't accept memory cards over 32mb.I've taken no less than 994 pictures with this camera and it has no sign of slowing down yet! Also, Joshim is right, rechargables are a godsend, but if they go bad, expect to pay a pretty penny for replacements. I had one of my four batteries (I had eight but four went missing some time ago and never turned up) go bad last week and it cost me $11 for four new batteries.It still outweighs the cost of buying loads and loads of single-use batteries though.Most any digital camera that is capable of taking pictures at 640x480x16 or above should do you just fine for BVE purposes.Hope this helps...
Tim Frost
NVTA Subway routes for BVE:
http://nvta.co.uk

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