Janet Tweedy wrote:
Some of you post amazing close ups of flowers and panoramic views of
gardens. What camera do you sure?
I listened to an experienced photographer some 2 years ago and got a
Fuji finepix 602 but it is incredibly complicated for what I want to
do , what with macro switches, manual controls, close up and fast and
slow speed settings etc. It is also heavy and quite bulky though I
have no doubt to an experienced photographer it is the Bees Knees.
I doubt your old camera is a problem technically.
However, you may need to spend some time learning how to use it.
I would recommend getting a few books, or going on a course at a local
college, on how to take pictures and understanding a few of the manual
controls and their effect (and which controls are not very useful!).
A tripod will help no end, and a few light reflectors can even out shadow
problems (bits of white paper, nothing posh!)
However, if purchasing again, I'm a fan of the Canon A series models because
they are fairly cheap, give good results, and have manual overides when
needed (and it has an optional extra filter adaptor, see below). But there
are lots of other decent cameras around.
One thing I would recommend for closeup work is a separate macro filter.
And for this to work easily, a camera has to have the ability to take
screw-in filters, either directly or through an adaptor. Many consumer
"point and shoot" cameras don't have this option.
The filters are very cheap (I paid about £4 each for a x2 and a x4). If
your camera has a long zoom range, the filter allows you to stand back from
the subject (flower) and take a closeup picture. With most cameras, the
closeup/macro feature requires you to be right ontop of the subject, and
thus suffers from both shadows (from you and camera) and optical distortion
(everything looks bent).
Short article on the topic of closeups here, OK its model trains, but swap a
flower for the train parts and you should get the idea. The train bogies
(silver thing) is about 30mm long and is stood on an upside down coffee cup
mat.
http://www.2mm.org.uk/articles/budgetphotos/index.htm
- Nigel
--
Nigel Cliffe,
Webmaster at
http://www.2mm.org.uk/