Hays guys I really want to start a good collection thread and think that some of the cards i have are “very rare” and will be nice to see them altogether in one place.
As people know i collect the base set in every langague and variety and i am now over 86% done this last 14% is a killer.
I have brought a tripod for my phone and also brought on these
but they come out ok but they are not very clear and when i turn the lights on the reflect off of the psa card sleeve.
how can i imporve the picture quality without you know buying a reallyy expensive camera i also have a samsung galaxy s9 that i am taking the pictures with
I use the same lighting studio and have been able to get pretty good success taking pictures from my phone. The tips I can give you are:
Make sure the card is as upright as possible so that the LED lights do not reflect into the lens of the camera.
Position the camera so that it looks directly into the light box with no slant.
I’ve been able to achieve pictures like this:
Which I’m then touching up using Instagram (which unfortunately seems to lower the quality slightly):
For that I use Instagram’s Ludwig filter, decrease brightness by 25 and increase contrast by 25, then sharpen by 50 and structure by 25. It’s certainly not perfect, but I think it creates a very professional looking image.
For ungraded cards like this one:
I use the same Instagram Ludwig filter but adjust highlights by 100, then adjust sharpen by 25 without touching any other settings. I think this one comes out even nicer:
I’ve not tried the red background which comes with the photo studio I bought, but I notice the green one seems to give the card I’m picturing a green tint, so I’m avoiding that one now.
I’m sure @chrisbalestra can chime in with some better tips!
It will only be my psa graded cards that i want to take photos off i spent 6 years so far getting these still need 149 more to complete what i want to complete so these are not gong anywhere just wanted to show off alittle and maybe some people can see some rare cards and some are a population of 1 quite alot of them are under 5 as well
I’ve got a Galaxy S8 I use to take my photos. Have you upgraded to the latest version of Android? I’m on AT&T and the latest update was rolled out to my phone last month. It upgraded the camera app so that you can adjust contrast and saturation before taking a picture. Here are the settings I use:
Make sure you are using Pro mode in the Camera app. White Balance (WB) is 5500k (daylight) because you are using bright white LEDs (can’t do much about reflection other than experimenting with placement). You can use Manual focus for more precision, but sometimes I’m lazy and rely on Autofocus. Play around with the left 2 settings until you get what you want. Tapping the 3rd from left setting that says Manual will give you the screen below.
Contrast will help your cards stand out from the black background. Increased saturation makes the colors really pop. Too much saturation doesn’t look good though, so play around with these settings until you get what you want.
Rather than a light box, I put two bright lamps on either side of my phone. This helps with not getting light reflections showing up on the cards. Here’s what my photos look like:
Thank you so much for the advice looks lke i will have to play around with the setting and see what i “like” just want to take a good photo my always look awful
hopefully i can start making better ones want to start showing off my collection 
