Finding good images/screen caps of shmups

[kyuzo]

I'm trying to put together a little blurb about the games I'm putting in my cabs at work to hopefully make playing more approachable. With these blurbs I'd like to have a good "representative" picture of the games I'm talking about. I checked what I could find for futari on google and didn't find anything that was very good. I'd also like to avoid grabbing someone's image if they don't want me to and I don't expect people to get back to me quickly, so that's unfortunate too.

Any good place to get these kinds of screenshots or advertising art? I'm hoping for something that's approx 2048px wide, but anything goes really...

Thanks

[man9child]

You could always take screen grabs in mame if the game has been emulated.

[t0yrobo]

Google and the official Cave page is probably your best bet. But you probably won't find any gameplay images at that resolution, you'll need to resize them in photoshop or something similar with the resample box unchecked.

Emphatics custom movestrips could be really handy too, http://www.emphatic.se/?p=807.

edit: taking grabs off a superplay dvd would probably be pretty good too

[Ed Oscuro]

You can also take photographs of screens if you have any available - let me know if you want some tips on doing that.

[Blackbird]

Best way to get really crisp images would probably be to simply screen grab an image running on a hi-res computer monitor.

[kyuzo]

You can also take photographs of screens if you have any available - let me know if you want some tips on doing that.

I'd love to hear any tips I was thinking about just taking pictures with my camera but since it's heavy and the glare gets kinda bad I was hoping for alternatives, but this seems like what I'm most likely to do...

I thought about the screen grab emulation angle, but since I have no clue if even all of the games are emulated and I don't have the ROMs for any of them so it seems like that'd be a lot more effort...

I was hoping someone would just hand me some site with a buncha in game art that they had laying around, but I guess that was a bit naive

[t0yrobo]

I was hoping someone would just hand me some site with a buncha in game art that they had laying around, but I guess that was a bit naive

rancor hosts a bunch of posters in 300dpi on his store site http://www.sk8tokyo.com/shmup/posters.htm, nothing for gameplay though.

[emphatic]

List the games you want and pictures will show up. For sure.

[kyuzo]

List the games you want and pictures will show up. For sure.

Haha that definitely sounds worth trying

Right now I'm gonna do the following:
- Futari Black Label
- 19xx
- SF 2 Zero Alpha

If I remember to bring my camera to work tomorrow I'll try taking some pictures too (though since I'll be doing it at work I'm guessing I won't end up with much good stuff due to time constraints...) Anyone interested in me posting the ones I take?

[Ed Oscuro]

I just remembered that the HLSL effects for MAME are said to give a pretty good arcade screen look, with curvature and scanlines.

A short list of ideas on taking photos of the screens (no guarantees; it would be easier in some respects if we were using film):

Preparation
- Get the biggest camera you can find. Bigger sensor = better.
- Deactivate the camera flash. If the camera has a Manual mode (traditionally "M" on the dial), use that. You may also want to turn off any lights when taking the actual photos. The only light should be from the monitor, ideally.
- Get a stable surface for the camera to rest on. A tripod is great. Trying to hold it by hand is not (though if you must, get as close as possible to the screen and use the widest setting available to you, so long as the perspective doesn't look odd and there is no barrel distortion).
- If there is a timer mode on the camera, or you can use a remote or USB cable to shoot remotely, do that. It will help keep the camera stable.
- Up the brightness of the screen as much as possible.

Camera settings
Shooting a still image will be easiest, but you still must account for the refresh rate of the monitor (on a horizontal screen this appears as a line that is bright on top, and dark below; the bright part is caused by the phosphors being excited by the CRT; the darker part is by the phosphors on the lower section starting to fade).

For starters, try setting the camera's shutter speed to 1/60 second, and see how it turns out. At this point, look for lines on the screen or blurred movement.
- If there are lines on the screen try a longer shutter speed (1/40 is slower than 1/60).
- If there is blurred movement try a shorter shutter speed.

Now look at the overall brightness of the photograph.
- If it is too dark, first try the widest aperture (going in the direction of f0, i.e. f8 is smaller, and lets half as much light in, as f/5.6; f/4 is twice as bright as f/5.6) possible.
- If it is too bright, you can manually decrease the brightness afterward, and retain detail. Otherwise, at this point you may want to select a smaller f/number (i.e. f/8 instead of f/5.6).

Now, if you need the detail for a large print, there are two final things to consider: Noise and sharpness.
- Most lenses are sharpest at apertures around f/5.6-f/8.
- If noise - the little random pattern over an image - is overwhelmingly bad, your camera probably is set to a high ISO or has selected a high ISO. Set it lower manually. On Canon cameras, try to select ISOs only in the doubles progression, i.e. ISO 100, 200, 400, 800. ISO 1600 is going to look bad unless your camera is amazing, and ISO 800 probably will look borderline. Keep in mind that ISO is an indirect control just for brightness.

Having an image that is bright is preferable to having one that is too dark - the bright image can be darkened a bit to get the right brightness. Trying to brighten a dark image will highlight any noise.

I haven't followed a pattern as strict as I've outlined here, but this should be the easiest and most straightforward routine for getting decent photos.

[spadgy]

Most stuff that has a PAL or US release will have some art on the Gamespress press assets website I have access too. I can check titles if you want.

Also, for press each PAL Cave release has a load of hi-res assets on USB sticks. I think I have them laying about somewhere (don't get excited collectors! I just mean blank sticks with some files tossed on by Rising Star Games).

[kyuzo]

Ed: Sorry, I probably should've been more clear, I'm actually pretty into camera stuff, so not too worried about any that I mostly meant I wasn't sure what to do about the screen being very reflective and having no control over the lighting and about whether there was anything additional to think about capturing arcade screens since I mostly just take pictures of my daughter... Unfortunately I forgot to bring my camera today though, I'll try again tomorrow Thanks for the writeup

spadgy: Thanks, that's good to know I might ask you in the future

[shmuppyLove]

A site I recently came across -

http://www.southtown-homebrew.com/

They sell various arcade bits n pieces, but they also sell shock boxes and generously host some very high-res artwork that others have put together. A very large selection of MVS inserts, as well as a smattering of PGM, SH3, Atomiswave and ST-V ones.

[spadgy]

spadgy: Thanks, that's good to know I might ask you in the future

Do - all those press images are public domain too, so there's no worries on that front!

[Special World]

If anybody has good Futari Black Label, Deathsmiles, and Akai Katana images, I'd appreciate those as well. I was thinking of writing some articles.

ED: I'd be writing about the 360 games, so the upscaled graphics would probably be better. I think Deathsmiles looks terrible in 360 mode, but eh.

[emphatic]

Here are a couple of Futari BL shots I did as an example:

http://emphatic.se/temp/futari_blk_title.png
http://emphatic.se/temp/futari_blk_demo.png

These are MAME exports resized with "nearest neighbor" filter and also have discrete, fake, scanlines on top.

[CMPXCHG8B]

Any good place to get these kinds of screenshots or advertising art? I'm hoping for something that's approx 2048px wide, but anything goes really...

These games don't run at that kind of resolution. Most of them run somewhere around 320x480 (rotated to 480x320), which is nowhere even remotely near 2K wide. There's no way to change that resolution either because you're dealing with rasterized sprites and rarely 3D geometry (and even if you managed to get a 3D game rendering out at a higher resolution, the texture resolution would still be the same and thus look like crap).

Your best bet to get that sort of resolution is to either look for scanned advertising (which won't be indicative of the in-game artwork), or take a screenshot from something like MAME and post the hell out of it in Photoshop. Blow it up, add some nice scan lines, maybe even throw in some simulated curvature for the hell of it. Since this is print and you're working in Photoshop, you can do whatever you need to in order to make it look good.

The only other alternative I can think of is to get a screenshot of a game, toss it on a real arcade CRT somehow, and use a dSLR with a tripod in a dark room to "capture" the CRT effect. That would take some doing though and someone with non-standard equipment since you can't just take a picture of a running arcade game- it'll be moving too fast to get a nice sharp image. You'd need someone who can hook a computer or something up to the CRT instead and display a static screenshot of the game on it.

-CMPX

[Ed Oscuro]

Ed: Sorry, I probably should've been more clear, I'm actually pretty into camera stuff, so not too worried about any that I mostly meant I wasn't sure what to do about the screen being very reflective and having no control over the lighting and about whether there was anything additional to think about capturing arcade screens since I mostly just take pictures of my daughter...

When you say you have no control over lighting, is it that you are at an arcade somewhere? OK, that is definitely a tricky situation. There is a solution though!

Glare should be controllable by the use of a polarizing filter. If you can't afford one, you might be able to make do with polarizing sunglasses held in front of your camera...though I wouldn't bet on it. I would only get a circular polarizer that can be rotated so that you can find the position where it blocks most of the reflected light while letting through most of the CRT's light. Of course, this comes at the cost of a bit of light transmission through the lens, meaning that it will be even harder to get a bright, fast exposure.

As for there being anything additional to think about - as I wrote, it's mainly the timing of the CRT refresh that you need to be aware of. For a 1/60 second refresh, a 1/60 shutter speed would work except that the top of a screen being refreshed vertically (top to bottom) will be darker than the lower portion, and that's assuming you can get a shot at the precise moment the scanning beam has finished traveling down the screen, which in practice is very difficult to do. If framerate is not a huge issue, 1/30 second would be better for more uniform lighting.

[kyuzo]

These games don't run at that kind of resolution. Most of them run somewhere around 320x480 (rotated to 480x320), which is nowhere even remotely near 2K wide. There's no way to change that resolution either because you're dealing with rasterized sprites and rarely 3D geometry (and even if you managed to get a 3D game rendering out at a higher resolution, the texture resolution would still be the same and thus look like crap).

I'm just trying to avoid the standard "mame running on lcd look" which is why I mentioned the higher resolution...

Glare should be controllable by the use of a polarizing filter.

Yeah, I was hopeful about using a polarizing filter initially too, but I realized that almost all the light that gets in the way isn't polarized glare, but just straight up reflected light, so it didn't do anything

I took some pictures today and they all have problems, but some are at least kinda neat, I can hopefully post them tonight

[kyuzo]

Hah, pictures ended up even worse when I looked at them on my computer

http://i1169.photobucket.com/albums/r50 ... 9532-1.jpg
http://i1169.photobucket.com/albums/r50 ... G_9535.jpg
http://i1169.photobucket.com/albums/r50 ... G_9548.jpg
http://i1169.photobucket.com/albums/r50 ... G_9547.jpg

Definitely like your images better empathic, I guess I'm gonna have to download me some roms just to take screenshots of my PCBs

Haha

[emphatic]

Those are pretty good actually, but if possible you could adjust the contrast and light levels (in Photoshop or GIMP) to get them looking way better.

[Ed Oscuro]

I agree. If you run Linux, you can use Darktable (it's like Adobe Lightroom, I hear). But for a simple contrast adjustment, GIMP should be fine.

In any case, setting up HLSL will help you avoid the "MAME look"

[kyuzo]

I'll give it a shot I guess I have lightroom (no photoshop), but since I'm used to only taking pictures of my daughter it'll be interesting trying to do this kind of touch up stuff for the first time

[Ed Oscuro]

I should note that I didn't look for metadata, and I didn't question if you were getting the most out of the exposure that you could. If I had a shot like that, I'd try tweaking the settings. It is odd, though, because the problem doesn't look like exposure, but contrast. Probably out of your control.

[kyuzo]

Not sure if photobucket strips out the exif anyway... They were all 200 mm, ISO 100, 1/30 and either f/4 or f/4.5. The 200 mm was mostly because I got the least amount of reflected light directly on the screen from higher up so I took them from the third floor (the cabs are on the second floor with a giant skylight over a big opening in the third floor). I wanted to take the pictures earlier in the morning than I eventually managed too, so I might try again but I haven't decided yet