EDIT: WHAT THE FUCK IS THIS SHIT??? http://www.toplessrobot.com/2010/03.....ren_not_to.php

Well, as suspected, going to a copy center to get my larger format stuff scanned in would cost a small fortune. Not to mention that they are universally suspicious and don't like scanning artwork, a concept I have a difficult time understanding when you HAVE THE ORIGINAL. Most of the work just looks comic-bookish, though there are a few large drawn maps in there and character sheets. Only a few of them are NSFWish, and I wouldn't bother bringing them in to the shop anyway. That, and they won't let me do the work myself. I wouldn't mind paying really if they did, but, even though these people do what they do all day, they seem to know nothing about capturing/printing images. I've done far superior work with a home printer compared to what they've screwed up in the shop. So how can I trust them to scan my items for me?

So, I will have to resort to photographing the work, which is more difficult than it seems. Indoor attempts have been less than successful, though a few of the tries have been uploaded here already. The ones which have a mostly white background give away the lighting setup and I can't afford studio lighting at the moment.

My camera, though awesome of the DSLR variety and finally fully kitted out (range of lenses and a decent flash unit, remote), it's of the 5MP variety (Nikon D50). Now, this is a great piece of equipment, keep in mind, by both ease of use and total power over the picture itself, and would even be good for taking pictures of average format items (8.5"x11" and smaller), as the aspect and total resolution is similar to most average scanner beds. But, for the large format stuff I would lose a lot of detail for print purposes unless I shot several sections individually and stitched them together. Efforts in the past to do this, though, resulted in patchy color construction due to different color sampling between images and the inevitable misalignment of the work somewhere in the image. Patching programs always manage to distort the image, in my experience. I'm a perfectionist, and it's a big road block to getting things done.

This is also why I haven't uploaded any of my other, smaller work either, as this is the first step I want to get done before anything else. *Sigh*

However, I'm still going to experiment with shooting the images outside once I get a clear, sunny day. I've studied where the sun hits the house and when, and I need to shoot at about 3:00pm to get the right light in the most opportune area I have to work with. This limits me to doing it on weekends, and lowers the chance of finding a sunny day to work with, given that I live in Portland, Oregon.

Eventually, I will have a newer camera, though I love my D50. I recognize, however, that I've outgrown the limitations that it has, and my equipment could yield so much better results with a higher level body. I'm looking at the D300 right now, but damn these cameras get expensive. I've had my D50 for about five years now, and it has served me well, over tens of thousands of pictures.

I'll get something new up soon.