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Kenny and Gene: Photo Help Needed

minousbijoux

Super_Ideal_Rock
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Aug 5, 2010
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12,804
Its the camera's ability to focus, not my ability to get close to the subject matter. Of course, the camera's ability to focus is a function of the amount of light, so once again, a light tent and lights should hopefully do the trick. :praise:
 

0-0-0

Brilliant_Rock
Joined
Jul 30, 2010
Messages
1,257
I use a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35 with a similar sized sensor as the Nikon COOLPIX S6000 for my pictures. In my experience 3 things help cameras with smaller sensors and auto focus take better macro pictures.

1. More light. I haven't tried using light boxes/tents yet, but I find that sunlight on cloudy days give the best results so far. The clouds essentially act as a giant light tent for the sun.

2. Trick the camera to auto focus on something high contrast in the frame of the picture right beside the stone. Reflections coming off the facets sometimes confuses the camera's auto focus. Brochures and prints with black text on white backgrounds work well. It's also much easier to check that the text is in focus vs the stone's facets on the camera's small screen.

3. Keep the camera steady. Putting the camera on a tripod and using the timer on the camera would be ideal, but I usually just rest the camera on some books/boxes or lean it against the wall/table and hold my breath. :lol:

On my camera I usually use no more than 3x optical zoom and can get within an inch of the stone when taking macro pictures. But I find that it works better for me at a distance of roughly 5 inches. Both pictures below are shot in auto mode in jpg. Only post processing done on the computer is cropping and re-sizing. Both taken in sunlight on a cloudy day but in different locations and different times of day. The slight green shift in the aqua in the second picture is true to life. Not professional quality like Kenny's and Gene's pictures, but good enough for my purposes.

Picture taken at a distance of 1 inch. Stone is reflecting the camera lens, making it look darker than its true color. The rest of the camera is already covered with a white paper towel.
f/2.8, 1/30 sec., ISO-200 according to picture properties.
aquapendantsunlightcloseup.png

Picture taken at a distance of 5 inches. True to life color with no strange reflections.
f/3.6, 1/40 sec., ISO-160 according to picture properties.
zoomP1010013.png
 

kenny

Super_Ideal_Rock
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Apr 30, 2005
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Lovely shots thbmok, especially for a point and shoot with a small sensor! :appl:

MINOUSBIJOUX, make a little cardboard spacer that's 1.2" wide so you can easily put them gem 1.2" away.
It's really important that you get the gem to be as large as possible on your sensor before you take a pic.
You don't have any sensor area to allow to go to waste.

BTW, again, you must experiment since that 1.2" may be to the sensor not to the front edge of the lens.

screen_shot_2013-02-26_at_9.png
 
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