Solved Camera to Pc linked communications?

George, your making my head spin! lol just kidding.

Think I will break this down in parts, OK lens first.

Table top range is from 1 to 4 feet but the camera is movable. so a minimum of a foot and a half is easily achievable in most cases.
The trouble with the present camera is the DOF, it has a fixed f setting and tends to only focus on the closest point or the middle of the overall depth and everything behind or forward of that point gets prospectively and continually more blurry and this is not good for most item we shoot. Yes a soft background is desirable in some cases but would like the option of choosing.

Will your recommendations for lenses accommodate these needs?

Many times the object/s may have a depth of 3 feet and its important that a majority if not all are in focus, keep in mind that I am ignorant in this matter and not sure what settings do what, I will do some more home work.

Moving beyond the point and shoot leaves a learning curve of features.

In the case of the pic below, the present camera focused in the middle, the writing on the boxes are blurry both close and far while the unimportant is in focus and this is only about 1 foot in depth. Yes I could manually focus on the closest point and have that in focus but anything beyond that is not good.



Now the stupid part is that I don't know if this is a lens issue or lack of camera features/settings/performance or both. I have found one thing to compensate for this and that is to back the camera off about 8 feet and use the optical zoom and then more of all the objects are in focus but this is inconvenient in most cases and hopefully with the right equipment not necessary.

Hate to bother you with but not one word you write falls to the wayside!

Going to look into your suggested lenses and see if there are any I can afford. lol

Spicy_Chicken wrote: Hate to bother you with but not one word you write falls to the wayside!

This isn't a bother to me. So many, so often have shared with me, I enjoy sharing back.

Spicy_Chicken wrote: Table top range is from 1 to 4 feet but the camera is movable. so a minimum of a foot and a half is easily achievable in most cases.
The trouble with the present camera is the DOF, it has a fixed f setting and tends to only focus on the closest point or the middle of the overall depth and everything behind or forward of that point gets prospectively and continually more blurry and this is not good for most item we shoot. Yes a soft background is desirable in some cases but would like the option of choosing.

Will your recommendations for lenses accommodate these needs?

Many times the object/s may have a depth of 3 feet and its important that a majority if not all are in focus, keep in mind that I am ignorant in this matter and not sure what settings do what, I will do some more home work.

We know to open up the lens to the largest iris setting (smallest f stop) to achieve critical focus, because a lens really only focuses to one distance. Then we close the iris (larger f stops) to achieve the desired DOF or focus range.

We also know that usually, the shorter the focal length, the greater the DOF, and vise-versa. So, in your case, to keep the lens investment to a minimum, yet achieve the DOF you need, you may want to think about something like the Nikkor f2.8 18-105mm zoom. I'm not suggesting a Nikon, just the specs on this lens as an example. Similar lens are available from Canon or Sony (Konica/Minolta). With a true DLSR and a quality matching lens that is both manual and automatic, you should have complete control of focus, f-stop and of course shutter speeds.

This is a wild guess, but I think if you back off your camera to subject distance a little bit, get a higher angle onto the subject, close down the f stop to about f/8, you should be close to achieving the 3 foot focus range you need.

You may have to up your lighting output to have the ability to close down the f-stop to achieve DOF you need. For practical purposes, it's hard to get to much light output from the affordable lights commonly used in studios. Are you using speed lights (strobe lights)? If not, that is probably what you should consider in your situation to achieve a deeper focus range of your subjects. I can provide more on this subject if you would like. If you are using incandescent lights or LED lights, it may be a matter of adding more lights or increasing the bulb output to gain enough light on subject to get your depth of field under control.

Spicy_Chicken wrote: Moving beyond the point and shoot leaves a learning curve of features.

Yea, those pesky learning curves......I know them well!!!

Spicy_Chicken wrote: In the case of the pic below, the present camera focused in the middle, the writing on the boxes are blurry both close and far while the unimportant is in focus and this is only about 1 foot in depth. Yes I could manually focus on the closest point and have that in focus but anything beyond that is not good.

Now the stupid part is that I don't know if this is a lens issue or lack of camera features/settings/performance or both. I have found one thing to compensate for this and that is to back the camera off about 8 feet and use the optical zoom and then more of all the objects are in focus but this is inconvenient in most cases and hopefully with the right equipment not necessary.

Well, as I'm sure you are aware, digital zoom is not a good thing and we should avoid it if at all possible. This should be easily avoidable with a DLSR.

Typically we do critical focus in the middle of the most important part of the subject, and then add DOF to get the subject areas that closer and father away from the lens, in focus as best as practical. We can violate this rule depending on the subject and the effect. So in that particular shot, I would focus on the '11' and then increase DOF so everything on the first row of boxes were in focus. If I had additional DOF I could also extend that range, but having the 2nd and 3rd rows slightly out of focus would draw attention to the most important part, the Number 11 ink cartridge in the front row, while it would still illustrate you have a lot of ink cartridges!

[img]http://tactrain.net/Vegas Pro 13/004.jpg[/img]

Fortunately, table top/products usually don't move! That allows us a wider range of shutter speed to adjust for greater DOF. If the table is rock solid and the camera/tripod combination is rock solid, it would not be unreasonable to use shutter speeds below 1/30. I have found keeping shutters speed above 1/60 provide better color luminance, and keeps closer to the center of a workable dynamic range.

So in a lens, what would be important to me, if I were doing your type of work.....
- Zoom lens about f/2.8 20-105mm (in that range give or take a few mm), with a minimum focus distance in around 1.5 feet.
- Ability to have complete manual controls of focus and aperture.
- Will allow the use of extension tubes.
- Any type of auto-this or auto-that would be a bonus I would not turn down.
- Quality of a leading brand name, Nikon, Canon, Sony, Leica, etc. (and have real glass elements).

To complement the lens, in the camera I would need.....
- Manual control of the shutter.
- Full range of ISO speeds (usually the more the better, but there is a practical limit).
- Either a hot shoe or flash PC connections for speed lights.
- Descent battery life.
- The connection you require for the monitor and Android app.
- All the other gizmos, bells & whistles the budget could stand!

I like these type of threads, because 1 question leads to 10 answers and each of those answers lead to another 10 questions.....on and on! It's a learning process for both those who ask and those who answer.....so don't hesitate to ask more. I'm not a expert, sometimes I'm wrong, but I will always share as honestly and factually as I can.

If you don't have the budget for a new camera, the best all rounder you can get is one of the Canon DLSRs in this series.
T3i, T4i, T5i or T6i

So many of these have been sold, there is large second hand market for you to choose from.
Because it uses a common lens fitting, you will also have a wide variety of 2nd hand lenses to select from.
I think these would be a better choice than the Sony A77, because the screen can flip out in the Canons so you can see what is being recorded when stranding in front of the camera.

Just found something very interesting.
Canon's app for their EOS T series does not allow you to download pics to a PC via wifi only via USB cable. They may be viewed via wifi but not downloaded.
Canon's community forum is littered with folks begging for better software and firmware to solve this issue.

I'm bummed!

Everyone has their own opinion, but I wouldn't worry about lack of Wi-Fi in a camera, especially if you are only looking at 2nd hand older models.
A solid USB cable connection is far more reliable and for downloading your actual Videos and Images.
However most people including myself always remove the SD memory card and connect it direct into the computer for downloading of all files - much, much faster than all other methods.

Doctor, removing the SD card to download the pics is exactly what I want to eliminate and what this thread is all about. Right now we do this about 10 to 15 times a day and that adds up to about 3 or 4 thousand times a year and if we decide to get into this full time it could be twice that. Already have 3 SD cards in the trash from worn out leads and can only imagine that the leads on the reader and camera are taking its toll as well.

Speed is not a factor if the pics are automatically being downloaded right after they are taken and while we staging the piece for the next shot.

As specified in an earlier reply, that my budget is around $800 or so us which will buy a new t6i if we choose but the inability to download via wifi will shy me away and the other option on usb cable is not feasible because of the more than 50 ft. from the studio to our computer and what I think someone mentioned; 30 ft. is max on usb.

This whole thing is simple really, just want the pics to be in a folder on the PC when I sit down; with out the camera looking like its being simulated by the Borg. lol

personally I love the canon EOS t series, my sister have a t5i and just so happens it has the lens George recommends for my particular setup and she is willing to sell it to me for $300 and the shutter count is less than a 500, if we choose this route; one of two things have to happen, we move the studio closer to the pc or visa versa to shorten the USB cable. An option worth considering.

The vid shows what we want to achieve for several reasons;

Auto down load. (our tablet is already connected to our pc wirelessly so the folder chosen to automatically download the pics is on the pc desktop)
the ability to make quick and easy adjustments to camera settings without digging through layers on menu option on the camera
Viewing the image in real time on a much larger screen
Snapping the shutter without touching the camera or setting the timer
The list goes on.

for some reason the vid wouldn't post. Hmmm

vid

You need to set your YouTube video to public - that is why it is not embedding properly.

Spicy_Chicken wrote: As specified in an earlier reply, that my budget is around $800 or so us which will buy a new t6i if we choose but the inability to download via wifi will shy me away and the other option on usb cable is not feasible because of the more than 50 ft. from the studio to our computer and what I think someone mentioned; 30 ft. is max on usb.

Jeff,

Doing a little bit of pecking around I found two USB length extender options which may be of interest. Neither are cheap, but the price isn't that bad.

1st method.....use a Boosted USB 2.0 (active) extender cable. Using 2 12 meter cables will get you 78 feet.
I found this on a website in Australia Active USB Boosted

2nd method....use a USB 2.0 over CAT5. This allows for a total length of 80 meters. A 20 meter cable providing a length of 65 feet would be close to the distance you need. USB over CAT5

Tripp Lite also offers several options for CAT5 connection.....the 1st offers a maximum distance of 150 feet, the 2nd a maximum of 328 feet
Tripp Lite 150 foot

Tripp Lite 328 foot

If you are not familiar, CAT5 cable is typically used in network cabling. The cables come with RJ45 connectors. With any of the "USB over CAT" adapters, you would also need to purchase the cable. A 20 meter CAT5 cable would run about $20.00, maybe less.

For the Tripp Lite B202-150, and a 65 foot CAT5 cable you are looking at under $50.00.

I've never used one of these, but I might just try one to see the results. It may be worth calling Tripp Lite and talking with a tech.

In your setup, I would purchase enough cable to run up and along the ceiling, and through any walls and down to the computer station. At the camera, I would probably run the CAT5 cable up to the ceiling, leaving enough play to allow repositioning the tripod, then either run the cable above the ceiling, or under the ceiling suspended above head height by hooks or perhaps a section of PVC conduit. That would keep the cable off the floor and pretty much out of the way.

.......Just a thought.

George, a little bit of pecking around ...... right, took me a while just to fallow your footsteps. lol

Cat cable prob, not but the booster will certainly be a consideration for faster downloads if needed. Thank you for looking for me!!!

Purchase a Nikon d5300 24mp and in raw these files are humongous compared to what we normally work with but not as big as the pro's which can be seriously big!

Did down load the program for my tablet and just gotta' say what a dream combo. they link up in an instant and can control every non- physical setting with a touch, plus get to see it on a larger screen. The thing I like the most is making shutter, aperture, and iso settings instantly and seeing it in real time plus zooming 100% to dial the focus in perfect, get to snap the picture remotely and it downloads instantly. Worthless for on the go but for studio work ..... wow.

The kit lens is just ok in my opinion and have some prim lenses and what you recommended on the list of gotta have.

I can see lighting is not going to be as easy to tackle in my limited space and of course as you mention, top of the list in importance, I concur!
So many options out there it makes me dizzy. Take pics of such a wide array of items from quite large to very small that its difficult to choose but dimmable white led's, there is a vid on how to build your own, good size units for 1/4 the price.

Here is a pic with the new camera.




One other important thing I learned, Zoner was my favorite quick editing program for most pics but when shrinking the image it always turned out blurry even if the original was totally in focus but then tried it in PS and the results where way, way better, different compression I guess or?

Any who everything takes time to acquire but for the most part what I set out to do has been accomplished as far a file transfer. one other option for the raw files, wusb (wireless) but unless the object I am shooting is worth more then $100 then jpg is good enough because time has to be seriously considered for profits.