Last August my girlfriend was heading home when a (not so) nice man decided to rob her after asking for directions. She was o.k and he only stole one thing, unfortunately that one thing was my camera!
Since then I've been using a tiny compact Samsung I got hold of super cheap, pretty much the cheapest thing I could find with a macro function:
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| Yuck. |
I can't be too mean about it because it's kept things going since then by providing almost all the pictures I use here but, basically, it's a bit rubbish.
Now I'm no professional photographer so we aren't talking rocket science here but, as with most technology stuff, if you spend a bit more you tend to get a bit more for your money. This is the camera that got stolen, and I replaced it with the same model from eBay:
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| Yum. |
It's a bridge camera with full manual settings which is good fun for the 'real life' photography I get around to here and there. The main advantage of it for model purposes is that is doesn't just have macro, it has super macro! In regular English macro means you can get really close but super macro means it still focuses up to the point that the lens touches the subject. It's awesome.
Examples time.
Using the old Samsung the macro was awful, no matter how much I tried it'd rarely, if ever focus on the thing I actually wanted it to, always finding something slightly further away to focus on:
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| See how it's focused on the green stuff slightly further back? |
So I came to taking pictures from further back then cropping and adjusting them. This gave a more clear picture but varied the size and quality quite a bit:
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| More detail on the seals is visible but it's all smaller. |
Now for the Canon. Not much needs to be said, yI'm pretty sure you'll notice:
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| Taken from about 18mm away. |
So, there you go. The difference a camera can make in a couple of easy steps! I won't go on about how to do everything else as there are FAR better guides out there. Here's a couple of the best spots to look for tips:
Cool Mini or Not - CMoN's photography forum with a LOT of pointers on everything from camera reviews, upload questions and general frequently asked questions answered.
Bolter and Chainsword - photography section of their tutorials sub-forum, plenty of tips and tricks.
That'll do for now, if you're taking picture of your mini's then check out those pages, there's a lot to pick up from them and always something new to learn. I'll be getting the Honour Guard photo'd tomorrow evening hopefully so I'll be showing them soon!
Until next time all...
