Getting good digital photos

["Tesla list" <tesla-at-pupman-dot-com>]

Original poster: "Peter Terren" <pterren-at-iinet-dot-net.au> 

Some of you will have noticed, as I have, that many Tesla coil shots on the 
web are blurred, out of focus or are just don't convey the size of the 
sparks/streamers.

May I give a list of suggested criteria that I use for digital cameras (I 
did win an award for my cover shot on my site - well a small one anyway)

- Always use a tripod (or stack of bricks or the previous model TC). For 
medium exposures of seconds a hand held camera will blur a lot. The sparks 
will be sharp but the rest will be blurred.
- Make sure you get the end points of all the sparks to either side. 
Chopped off sparks don't really give the impression of size. (that is 
unless you do a Richard Hull and have sparks ONTO the camera)
- Try to get the sparks at a right angle to the camera by using a breakout 
point or grounded object.  Only by doing this will you see the full spark 
length in comparison with a fixed measure (which is usually the secondary 
winding height).
- Have a person in the background for scale (at a safe distance).  Even 
Tesla himself got this right in his photos (admittedly with double exposures).
- Adjust the background lighting to be able to see the surroundings for 
scale. It is best to at least partially cover the spark gap as this tends 
to wash everything out.  It should have a shrapnel and UV guard on anyway 
shouldn't it?
- Fix the focus on the TC toroid with lights on, hold the focus, then 
lights off, sparks on and shoot. This is needed as you can't autofocus in 
the dark. You may need to grow extra hands for this.
- Let the camera do an auto exposure and it will finish when it has enough 
light (may be 10 seconds on my camera).
- Don't put a large number of shots on your site. You choose the best 
one(s) to save others the trouble of downloading many.
- I use thumbnails linking to a largish size of compressed photo of 200 - 
400k but I am very choosy with the photos and lots get discarded.  I keep 
the resolution full (4 megapixel before cropping) but reduce the colour 
spectrum from 24 bit to 16 bit to save space. I can't tell the difference.
- I use some RF protection if my camera close up to the coil with a metal 
can made for the purpose.  I have previously used aluminium foil to wrap 
the camera with lens sticking out.
- Avoid windy times (unless you want to show the banjo effect) as it makes 
the streamers look blurred.
- (I might add if in Australia, don't hold your baby up in front of the TC 
for publicity shots).

Any suggestions welcome particularly about using film cameras.

Cheers
Peter (Tesla Downunder)
<http://members.iinet-dot-net.au/~pterren>http://members.iinet-dot-net.au/~pterren