Scanners, cameras and graphics tables

Scanners
scanners are a big help for games development because they are good hardware for scanning parts of a magazine that can be used for your own jobs.
The best type of scanner is the Drum scanner because it can do around 50 scans without need human interaction these cost around £5000 to £10 000 but they are around 6ft so you need to be an large business that has an large building with plenty of room. Due to their high price and size only the biggest company's can afford to have them. They are very good for posters and different large work to scan for everyone to see.

The second best scanner is the Flatbed scanner that is the most common around houses and small business that only need articles and pictures that are only A4 so these are not used as much as an Drum scanner that is for games developers and other large media business. The Flatbed scanners are usually connected to an printer so it takes up less room, they also use USB mostly but the Flatbed scanners that are on their own sometimes use wireless connection that allows you to have it in one room and find a book and just send the scans to an central computer in an different room and this easier than going into that room and scan it in there. The Flatbed scanner are usually priced around £30 to £300 this why they are more common than the Drum scanner.

The worst scanner you can get is the handheld scanner that is used by slowly moving it across the piece of work you want this is an bad way to scan because if your doing an A4 piece of work and jolt it will mess up the whole scan and you will need to start again. The handheld scanner has an very poor resolution that is around £20 so they are usually used at shopping centres and shops to scan barcodes.

The thing you need to take in the DPI (dots per inch) before buying an scanner because if you need to scan a high resolution image that needs 300DPI and your using an scanner using around 30DPI then you need to go out and buy another more expensive scanner and will be stuck with the old one.





Digital Cameras

There is allot of information to check before you buy an camera one including the amount of mega pixels e.g. one mega pixel is equivalent to one million pixels, the more mega pixels you have means the higher the resolution the picture will be in. Then you have to check what type of lens it has like an digital camera that has an digital zoom where it brings the picture closer to you unlike an Optical lens that uses optical zoom where the amount of piece of magnifying glass in the camera the better the picture and the magnified lens shows you the picture bigger but by being stuck out unlike digital that zooms in through an digital proses. Then you can get some cameras that are macro that is used for texture gathering that is good for photographers or games textures.

Camera phone

Camera phones use digital cameras that make most phones not very good for high detail pictures they range from £20 to £500, they are good for quick snaps that are for example if you see an fish that you would want in an game you take an picture of it then draw it up to better detail. An camera phones mega pixels range for 1 mega pixel to 5 mega pixels.

DSLR

These cameras are the best because they give you the best quality photos and are the very Best for texture artists to use because the mega pixels on these cameras are around 20+ and features optical lenses around 90 percent of the time just to make sure that all the photos taken are spent on. These cameras are also used by professional photographers and paparazzi but some times they are just used by people who have hobby's of taking beautiful photos.

Compact camerasThese are easy and convenient to use because they are very compact and usually have an good amount of mega pixels. It depends on the make and model but most compact cameras are £50 to £400 because some use digital lens while others use optical that makes a hell of an difference when it comes to the quality of photo you take.

Graphics tablets

Most graphics tablets are made by Wacom and cost from £50 to £3000. A graphics tablet is an input device which allows the user to draw on an computer programme such as Photoshop this is an much more accurate way to draw on an computer because its exactly like drawing with pencil to paper. Graphics tablets connect through an USB but don't lag and the more expensive you go when buying one the higher the pressure sensitivity will be and the larger drawing area will be.