How do I chose a good camera for texture hunting?

Question

Texture hunting is the photography of walls, surfaces, artefacts, etc, typically outdoors, with the intention of using the photos in a computer game. The photo could be of a brick or concrete wall, a chain link face, a door / window, or whatever. It is also possible to photograph a white wall that has been damaged or stained in some way, process it in various ways, and use this as a mask on top of other textures, in order to get a new damaged variant.

Textures are typically lighting-neutral and extremely sharp. The computer game will compute its own lighting and shadows. One must avoid having a shadow across the subject, as this will only have to be removed in post-processing. Typically, texture hunting is done on cloudy days where there is a uniform soft light from the sky.

1024×1024 is a reasonable size of the final texture, but it's usually photographed at a higher res, photoshopped considerably, and then sized down. The subject of the photo could be something like 5 metres × 5 metres. The idea is that every pixel is being used to the fullest effect to convey the character of the surface. Textures are often photoshopped to become seamless so they can be repeated across a large surface in game.

Textures are usually shot perpendicular to the wall as much as possible, otherwise distortion correction is required. Sometimes you can take a photo from further away and zoom in to get a better view of a high wall.

It is often quite hard to find a surface in the real world that has an interesting texture and is easy to photograph from the right angle. In particular, taking photos of the floor is challenging because you need to be several metres above it, looking down. Leaning out of windows / over bridges, or holding up a tripod are solutions.

One thing that concerns me is that some cameras do image processing on the digital image. Really, the artist has to be doing all of the image processing offline, in photoshop or similar. I often see digital camera photos with edge enhancement artefacts in high contrast areas. Perhaps raw shooting mode is the answer to this?

Shooting digital photos with greater colour depth than "8 bit per channel" might also be useful to avoid banding when increasing contrast during post-processing.

Another thing is lens distortion — since we need to photograph flat surfaces. Either the camera has to be good at it, or it should be possible to turn it off so the processing can be done manually by an artist.

How do I find a camera which meets these requirements?

Answer 1

While the camera and lens are obviously going to have an impact on your success, I have to think that a good solid grasp on lighting techniques is going to have more impact on shooting textures than the camera will.

Just about any current DSLR (or even high-end P&S), ideally with a low-distortion prime lens, should give you plenty of technology to get started. The full-frame suggestion is absolutely right for optimum results, and certainly gives the advantage of a ton of resolution that you can crop to size, but it's going to be fairly expensive. If money is no object, go for the full-frame camera, but if you're on a budget, get a more modest camera and save some money for lighting equipment -- I think you'll produce better results with an entry-level DSLR and great lighting than you will with a full-frame camera and no lighting equipment.

If you're not familiar with the sort of impact lighting can have on your photos, check out strobist.com or some of the other communities that specialize in lighting techniques. I think you'll start to see how lighting is going to make the highlights and shadows in your textures really pop.

Answer 2

I'd recommend looking at a high-quality compact (Canon G12, Olympus XZ-1, a few others) that let you shoot RAW. Those have a few advantages over DSLRs that a texture-hunter might find useful:

• They typically have a 'macro' mode that allows you to focus within a few inches without needing a dedicated macro lens
• They're very small, so you’re more likely to carry it with you
• The smaller sensors (compared to DSLRs) will give you more depth of field at a given aperture, so you’ll be more likely to get enough in focus, especially if you're getting close to your subject
• They're probably going to be vastly cheaper than a DSLR
• They typically have image stabilization in the camera, so you'll be able to get away with hand-holding at slower shutter speeds
• The modern ones have more than enough resolution for your purposes, and any distortion is likely going to be corrected automatically by your RAW processing software.

So, that's something to consider.

Answer 3

Your main concerns are going to be:

1. As you say, the ability shoot in RAW.
2. Relatively noise-free output (but this requirement is mitigated by the ability to heavily post-process and downsize).
3. A good, sharp, distortion-free lens.

For the resolution you suggest, you should be able to get good results from a high-quality point & shoot (like the Canon G12 or similar). However, you'll get even better results from a larger-sensor interchangeable-lens camera — like a DSLR. I don't think you need anything expensive — an entry-level model should do. But you should look into spending some money for a very nice lens. Maybe a 70-200mm zoom or a 100mm macro. Probably an f/4 lens will be fine, rather than a more expensive f/2.8 version — since you'll probably want to stop down for sharpness and to increase depth of field and reduce focus error. If you can use a tripod, awesome, but having image stabilization will give more flexibility.

Pretty much any brand or model of DSLR should be fine for this purpose. They all give high-quality results and have the lenses you might need for this available.

Answer 4

I would suggest a full-frame DSLR, either the Canon 5D Mark II or the Nikon D700. Full-frame because you can then use the macro lenses optimized for flat-field rendering, and still have a decently wide field of view.

The lenses are the EF 50mm f/2.5 for Canon, and the Micro-Nikkor 60mm f/2.8G for Nikon. Nikon has had these kinds of lenses in production since the early 1960s, so there are plenty on the used market.

Both bodies have plenty of megapixels and can shoot RAW. They can also shoot 14 bit images.

If resolution is important, choose the Canon 5D Mark II.

Both Canon and Nikon have flash lighting systems with plenty of options for controlling light and shadows.