Thanks to someone pasting this link into a chatroom at the exact moment that I happened to glance at it for the only split second in the past week... the button project has been slightly delayed:

John Dies at the End

"John Dies at the End", aka JDatE, is an online "horror" novel which, if your simple minded like me, is worth the read. Though I typically cower from horror books and frightening movies, JDatE has a perfect mix of sensatioinalism, unreality, creepyness, and sarcastic humor; blending into an interesting and inventive work.

Blah de blah, enough critic nonsense. It's actually quite a page turner, with all the clifhangers right where they need to be, resolving on the next page quite unspectacularly enough to keep you wanting more. Yet, the humor and outside-the-box creativity keeps me glued to this story. I swear it would make a great TV series, albiet rather Twin Peaks. Or maybe a movie; perhaps a trilogy. And I'm only on chapter 5.

Since someone unsuspectingly cursed me with this, I'll curse you with it also. Maybe it'll distract you until I can uncurse my camera so it takes accurate pictures of these buttons after my hours of trying.

Does the novel, in some way, involve JDate, the online Jewish dating service? I cancelled my account maybe four years ago and they still occasionally spam me. Sounds like a mystery to me.

As to your camera issues, more details please, so we can properly digress into a discussion of how a much more expensive camera would be equally unable to address your needs.

As Mark was getting at in another thread -

1) Find room lit so that the button lighting is visible along with the fascia.

2) Mount camera on tripod, turn on self timer, turn off flash.

3) Set custom white balance while filling frame with white sheet of paper.

4) Aim at empeg, press shutter.

If your camera doesn't have some of these functions, let us know what you've got to work with.

Matthew

As in this thread? Here's my recommendation for how to get a fantastic photo of an empeg with back-lit buttons.

Step 1: mount camera firmly on tripod and place empeg in suitable location.
Step 2: turn out all the lights (i.e., total darkness) and take picture(s) with just the empeg's display and button illumination. Tweak exposure until you're happy (i.e., no blown-out highlights).
Step 3: turn on the lights to help illuminate the case properly. Unplug the empeg. Tweak and photograph to make yourself happy, but whatever you do, don't move anything.
Step 4: combine in Photoshop.

There are many different ways of pulling off the combination. One way is simply "add" the pictures together. The black parts of the lights-out picture won't have any effect when you add them to the lights-on picture. For best results, you may want to reduce the levels of the lights-on picture for the on-screen area (i.e., Photoshop glare reduction for your screen) and maybe for the buttons as well.

Do that, and you'll have an absolutely fantastic final image. You can justify your horrific deceit against nature by observing that the human eye has a much wider exposure lattitude than any camera, and you're just trying to recreate what you can see, as well as you can actually see it.

Ok, JDatE is loosing my attention because it's starting to not be as cool as it was. But it was cool, for two nights or so. And no, it's not the Jewish dating service, but close.

Thanks very much for the photo tips! My goal was to get an absolutaly honest photo with no Photoshopping, but thanks to the "human eye exposure lattitude" that Dan mentions, this is tough. I've got a great set of lit-room-lit-buttons shots, slightly under exposed with accurate colors. Unfortunately, the fascias show up featureless thanks to the recessed lighting not casting enough ambient light (um, I guess). Because of this, I can't do the dark+light combination in Photoshop.

I'm going to try placing a 120 Watt industrial drop light in the room for ambient light. If that doesn't work, I'm taking the big white flourescent light from the work area in my basement and dangling it above my empeg. The buttons can look as bright in a lit room as they do in the dark, and the lit room shows the fascia features, giving the picture some meaning.

Man, I just want photos that are this good. Oliver, you are the man! My little Canon S50, resting precariously on my Pelican case which is resting on a chair, can make it happen. By noon tomorrow, I stop photographing, using whatever I've got and that's that. (can you tell I've spent way too long on this?)