On 30/09/2011 12:14, Jake wrote:
Trying to photograph spiders today made me realise that I need a
better digital camera as I found it impossible to focus on something
that big (garden spiders with bodies about three quarters of an inch
plus legs are big in my book)! I've got lots of photos of foliage and
brickwork with blurry blobs in front.

Is anyone able to recommend a decent digital camera for close up
photos of little creatures/flowers and the like? I'm happy to spend a
few hundred squid for a good one though for that money I'd like a
proper viewfinder.

I have used a Ricoh Caplio R6 for the last 4 years. It was bought as a
handy replacement for my old Minolta X700 SLR. The main reason I settled
on the Caplio was the inbuilt macro mode which allowed focussing down to
1 cm - ideal for plant photography. The 28 - 200 (35mm equivalent)
optical zoom was a bonus.

But I miss the ability to change depth-of-field so that what is in
closeup is in focus whereas much of what is in the background isn't.
That's the problem with the small sensors in compact digital cameras -
basically everything is always in focus (the aperture is fixed at f3.3
wide angle, f5.3 telephoto)! I also miss the ability to connect an
off-camera flash (the inbuilt flash is only usable to a couple of metres
at most. It is possible to get something further away lit, but you have
to turn up the ISO sensitivity, and then you get more noise and grain.

As to needing a viewfinder, I understand that some digital SLRs actually
use a small version of the LCD on the back that you look at through the
viewfinder. In that case, you might as well just use the back screen
(unless there is too much light to see it clearly).

Read as many different reviews as you can when you have a shortlist; you
may find that someone has discovered something which you would
absolutely hate to have to put up with on an otherwise perfect camera!

--

Jeff