I have a fairly "suspose to be nice" digital camera. However it seems to take fairly sorry close up pictures of rods, guides, handles and such, even in "tulip" mode.

I'd like to have a digital camera that takes close up pictures well and is very affordable.....do they make such a critter? What do you guys use?

DR

In my experience of taking of macro pictures of anything, my biggest problem is holding the camera steady enough. So using a small tripod or setting it on a table somehow will increase quality and sharpness. Are you also the button halfway long enough to allow the lens to focus? Also a lens that is not clean will cause distorted pictures.

I've taken great close ups using only a 3.2 megapixel.

Calvin

Nikon CoolPix 3200
Very low priced and has a "tulip" macro indicater

I had a heck of a time till I fingered it out by READING the book!! LOL
Why do us men have such a problem with reading the directions or
a map?? The world may never know!


Raymond Adams
Eventually, all things merge, and a river runs through it..

I have two older Panasonic disc cameras that work well, one is a PV-SD4090 and the other a PV-SD5000. I use the SD4090 for internet pics.
The trick for me is to zoom in, and back away a bit, and to have lots of indirect lighting so there's no glare. I have better cameras, but the Panasonics were affordable and I they use a camcorder battery so they can go all day taking pics. They are large, you won't get one in you pocket, but they hold a load of pictures on an LS120 disc.
I picked up a few spares on the @#$%& site for cheap last summer. They discontinued the model about 2 years ago. The SD5000 is a higher megapixle rating but the SD4090 seems to do better with internet and @#$%& pics.

I've used several digital cameras, and each one just took knowing the combination to get the shot you want to come out just right.
Most digital cameras don't have the lense capability to get super close, and reflected light is also a problem.

Check the menu on the one you have and look for a macro or "magnifying glass" icon. You might already have what you need. It really makes a difference on close ups.

Tripods and shutter release cables and all that sort of stuff is great, but there's still a little more to it. You also have to understand depth of field and the role and relationship that aperature (lens opening) and exposure (shutter speed) have in taking crisp photos. You're never going to get particularly good close up studio type shots with a point and shoot camera set on auto mode.

I can't give a tutorial in a message board post, but will have a full article in the next issue of RodMaker. Most of you already have cameras that are good enough to take pretty nice shots, but you're going to have to switch to manual mode and understand aperature, exposure and film speed (yes, digital cameras still have a setting for film speed) and the relationship between them.


........

Tom,

Thats my problem I believe. I have a 5 mpxl that will even take short films......I just dont know how to set the manual settings correctly I guess.......now I have to wait on the zine...........GLAD you covered that!!

DR

i have a canon powershot A630($300 when i got it but im sure cheaper now) and this is a half shot

[www.rodbuilding.org]

tom i just ordered the subscription of rodmaker tonight(my mom lisa ordered it for me) will i get that issue?



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/26/2007 09:17AM by Tom Kirkman.

Cannon 20D with the 10-22mm Sigma lense will suit your needs...I promise ya. Camera about $800 with 2 lenses, and the Sigma 10-22 is about $400. But the camera is bomb-proof for fishing, and will take pictures better than any point and shoot if you want to spend the extra $$. I think it is worth it in the long run.

Paul

the Canon 20D is a nice camera. but like tom said, many of you probably already have cameras which can do what you're trying to do without buying a newer, more expensive camera. and even if you do need to buy a new cam, you can get by with something without the highest megapixel ratings offered these days. and you can do it with a point and shoot although you have to understand there wil be limitations. and you have to read the instruction book. and some of you might want to consider taking a photography class though a local JC or adult school offering to fully understand the aperture/shutter speed/depth of field relationship although there's much more potential for explaining these things in tom's upcoming article.

there's a heck of a lot of cameras out there these days and most will work just fine. i can't comment on the various models and their abilities, there are web sites devoted to doing just that. dpreview.com is one. i usually use SLR style digital cameras for work everyday, the canon D1. but i did use a canon P&S called the S80 which took great macro photos on a week long hike on the john muir trail last summer. that camera is now discontinued.

eric
fresno, ca.

Look no futher, I had this same dilema, for christmas i wanted to get a camera for my girlfriend. I went here [www.digitalcamera-hq.com] and figured out by their recommendations the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LZ3 was the best and easiest to use camera for under $200. I was looking for easy, since she knows nothing about cameras. This is just point and shoot takes good pictures no matter what, in darkness, to much light, moving shaking, doesnt matter. The key is it has anti shake techno stuff even if your shaky it somehow compensates for it. I got it for 149 at circuit city BTW.

Since digital "film" does not cost anything I take ALOT of pictures, discard most, and keep the better ones. I use an older Cannon S100 Powershot digital camera. Its close macro (tulip) mode works great. I set it up either in a tripod or hold it in my hand. Yes, in my hand some shots are blurry, but like I said I discard many shots and keep the rest. A key to keep the blurriness down is to make the shutter open as short a time as possible. To do this, at least with my camera, is to use bright lighting.

Lou

Another thing to keep in mind is that you don't need a camera that features a high number of "megapixels" unless you're going to be taking extremely large photos. For internet use, which is a very low resolution medium, anything over 3 megapixels is overkill. The cover shots on RodMaker are taken with a 6 megapixel camera and that's enough to easily take care of these 8.5 x 11 inch photos.

I think the article will result in a lot of folks being able to take a lot better photos, in very short order.

..........

Who needs the fancy stuff, me and my $10 flea market camera, a one mega pixel Kodak are great.
You have to know more than point and click to take great pictures.
If you look at the photo board I have a few pics all taken with my $10 camera.

Depth of field = the area IN focus, from the very closest point to the farthest (where focus is lost & blurr takes over)
Aperature= the amount of light the camera allows in during exposure. the higher the number, the smaller the opening
Shutter speed= the amount of time the camera allows light in. Numbers given on cameras equal seconds or fractions of a second.

Tom is right, all three of these work in concert & the easiest to understand is the relationship between aperature and shutter speed. On traditional, all manual cameras, shutter speeds and aperatures are either 1/2 or double the number next to it, eg; shutter speed 1/250 is twice as fast as 1/125 and 1/2 as fast as 1/500. Aperature F5.6 lets in twice the light of F8, but 1/2 the light of F4 (more modern cameras can use a more complex number of options, but all result in a sliding scale from fast to slow and from open to closed). As shutter speeds go faster, the aperature settings need to open up more and vise-versa. Think of the two working together like a water spigot. If your "proper" exposure is a full glass of water, you have options on how you will fill it. 1- you can turn the spigot open all the way, full blast (aperature open all the way). The time it will take to fill the glass is very short (exposure). OR, 2- you can open the spigot just a little and allow the water to trickle in slowly. In either case, the glass (proper exposure) will get filled up. The tricky part is dept of field, which works as a function of aperature and unfortunately, does not necessarily conform to a 1/2 or doubling formula like speed and aperature. Also, determining where to focus to make sure everything up front and everything in back is in focus does not amount to focusing on the exact center as one might expect. Distance from the subject, lens focal length and a whole list of optic requirements determine where to focus to achieve sharpness in the area you want. I use charts for this, although the "depth of field" button many cameras have will show you what will be in focus. Many find this awkward due to the stopping down of the lens to achieve the effect, making even seeing through the viewfinder difficult.

This subject is truely the stuff of in-depth articles and I'm sure that Tom will cover all you need to know if you get his magazine. Hope I whet you appetite for more,

Tim

Generally, if you're shooting for deep depth of field (entire photo in focus) you will find it 1/3rd in front of your focus point and 2/3rds behind. So your focus point should be 1/3rd of the distance into your subject.

...............

Have a Canon Powershot A70. It took great pictures until I fell into the river. It never came back to life.
Have a Minolta Diamage X60. It took even better pictures with a killer macro...until I fell into the river. It "works", but has water spots on the lenses. It'd cost a $250 for Sony to even open it up.
For Xmas my lovely wife gave me an Olympus Stylus 720 SW. It's waterproof to 10ft, shock proof at 5ft. She knows me so well. It cost a little more, but it will beat that sinking feeling I keep having when I pull out the battery of a soaked camera and set it out to dry on the first day of the fishing trip of a lifetime. Next week when I'm surrounded by miles of water in the flats of Los Roques, I'll be more worried about the tailing loop of my double haul than whether I'll drop yet another camera snapping a picture of my first bone.
KJ

My Canon A60 (older one no longer made) works great on 'tulip' and I too take lots of shots and discard the bad ones.
Practice also pays off as well as having a good background and lighting.

My hack approach is to zoom the camera to the max first, then fit to the frame best I can while still being able to focus. The long focal length keeps more in focus. Soon as you go to macro settings, and nearer the object, depth of focus becomes a much bigger problem. With all the digitals today with high pixel counts, if the fully zoomed object is still smallish in the frame, you can clip and enlarge via Photoshop (or whatever). Usually without noticable quality degradation, but software enhancement can clean that up too if you like.
Great having full manual control and an SLR type camera. But Point-n-Shoot digitals these days are pretty darn capable, especially when paired with software. Even those without full manual control can be manipulated through what options they do offer. Start with good lighting and work from there at full zoom. ISO setting, slow shutter, landscape mode, exposure +/-, and specialized shooting modes are on most cameras. Playing with those is akin to having manual control.

BTW,,,, for an everyday good camera, I like the Canon Powershots. Small enough to easily pocket, and covers all I've wanted to do pretty well. Wife just picked up an SD600 6 megapixel for under $250. Costco had the 1GB SanDisk memory for $28. The digital zoom of 12x does quite well in basic mode, and the Macro mode seems quite good. Put it this way,,,, either with regular 3x optical zoom or macro mode, I can get a 100 yard spool of Gudebrod to fill the entire frame crisply. With macro mode even closer, can easily fill the frame with what looks like about 40 strands of A size nylon while still in good focus, seeing the individual cords ot each thread. In Macro mode on a caliper, 1/2" fills the horizontal screen with good focus.

If all you want is macro capability and can print up to 8X10 comfortably, then most modern day digicam (meaning small point and shoots) will do the job. Even older one that you can purchase for cheap. Do not need a digital SLR.

Advantages over D-SLR is this:
1. Much cheaper.
2. Much greater depth of field because of the small imaging chip.
3. Much closer macro without having to purchase a macro lens.

I don't have a specific budget camera recommendation but simply check out closest focusing distance. Preferably at longer part of the zoom.

As for lighting, check this out:

[strobist.blogspot.com]

Hope this helps. I'm wirting as one who owned a dozen digicams and also a DSLR.

Mo

ps: Currently, one of my favorite point and shoot due to its incredible 28-200mm in a very small body and amazing macro capability is the Ricoh R4 or Ricoh R5. However, if you are on a budget, you DO NOT need to spend over $150. Find something used in good condition. Unless you want to print larger than 8X10, you don't even need more than 3 or 4 megapixel for superb prints.