Talk:Tekwiki Guidelines: Difference between revisions

From Kurt: People will fix English mistakes and typos. That will happen naturally. It's great that you're assembling this information about the personality modules. I agree with creating pages for products that exist, even if we don't know much about them. As we find more information, we will have a place to put it. It is nice, but not necessary, to mention where the information came from. If the context is insightful, e.g., the product was part of a bigger system, or part of a logical product line, then it seems worthwhile. But we don't need attribution of every fact. If people doubt a factual claim on any Tekwiki page, they should feel comfortable asking in the Talk: page whether that fact is really true. Sometimes one gets just one chance to snap a photo of an instrument. For example, it is in a rack in a lab and the lighting is bad. That's the "something is better than nothing" case. Most of the time, photos outside on a cloudy day are good. There are multiple reasons for this. First, on a cloudy day, the light is diffused, so no shadows. Second, even on a cloudy day, the light level is usually higher than indoor levels, do the camera can use a low ISO, and fast shutter speed, and medium aperture. Third, the spectrum of the illumination on a cloudy day is smooth and fairly uniform. Avoid mixing light sources, e.g., incandescent with natural light, or direct sun with diffuse light. It's usually better to have uniform spectrum illuminating the entire subject. Also, if possible, use a neutral (e.g., gray) background. There are two reasons for this. First, some light will usually reflect from the background onto the subject. If you photograph a plug-in on a red car, and then crop the photo, it look weird because of the red light coming from below. The second reason for using a neutral background is that the auto white balance in the camera tends to perform better with more neutral pixels. If there are a lot of red pixels, the camera might try to "correct" that, which will ruin the colors of everything including the subject of the photograph. The best photographs I have gotten have been with multiple studio flashes indoors, using a DSLR on a tripod. It was a two-hour setup. But I have gotten photos 95% as good in five seconds outside on a cloudy day using my cellphone.