I took some more time to improve the method used to photograph and post-process the sketches. I realized that I don't always need to rely on completely removing direct light sources. After playing around with different positions and camera settings I leared a few things:
- It's best to take the picture from the same direction as the light source. I would reduce glare by simply leaning into the light source and taking the photo about 15-20 degrees off center.
- Using a little bit of zoom (about 3x) allows me step further away; this helps to reduce glare and prevent the camera sensors from biasing the glare to one side of the sketch.
- Contrast, black / white level settings on the camera seem to make more of an impact than the same settings in post-processing.
- A direct light source helps the white on the page to pop and I have more control over the visibility of objects when adjusting ISO with better light.
A good camera angle and distance probably make the largest impact. I refined the way that I adjust black / white levels, and played with different despeckle techinques.
I took some time to gather all the skeches from the last month and re-process them. I think the results are much better. If anything, some of the objects may be too easy to see now, and may not accurately reflect how dim or faint they really were in the eye piece. I'll have to carefully play with the contrast for future sketches.
For fun, I also attempted adding a vignette effect. This really gave the sketches the impression that the viewer was sitting at the eye piece. I decided to not add it to any of the sketches that I reprocessed for this month, but I may add it to future sketches.