http://www.adammillerrealtor.com/digital-cameras-fujifilm-finepix-s5200/
What’s a good camera for macro photography?
I currently have a Fujifilm FinePix S5200, but I’m not satisfied with the macro photos it takes.
Are there any cameras with wonderful resolution that are good for macro? I’m interested in digital more than film.
I just went through all my camera cases and found an Optika Telephoto and Wide lenses plus a couple of other things.
If not a camera, are there lenses that are good for marco photography? Any “better brands”?
I usually say that you can probably take decent macro photos with any digital camera, if you know how to use it, but after 10,000 photos with his S5200, this guy says that it’s useless for macro. http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/read_opinion_text.asp?prodkey=fuji_finepixs5200z&opinion=36375
Fuji says that it focuses as close at 1 cm for macro, so I’m going to think that maybe Fuji is right about their capabilities and I’ll give you my stock answer and see how you make out. This describes taking photos of jewelry for eBay, but it applies for any macro project.
For objects photographed from a distance of 3-4 feet, absolutely any digital camera and any “digital photographer” can get a suitable image. Don’t forget that the largest picture eBay will display (unless you are hosting your own images) is 800 x 800 pixels or less than 1 megapixel. For jewelry or other small items, you have to learn macro technique. You can also do this with almost any digital camera, but here’s an article that I wrote about jewelry in specific. I am sure that you will find it helpful.
The best way to take photos of jewelry for a web site is with a digital SLR and a macro lens. If you are not going to go with a DSLR, almost any point and shoot with a macro mode will serve you well. The thing is, I feel that you need to use the flash to force the aperture to close while still having enough light for an exposure. Many here will tell you different, but follow this advice and see what you think.
Use your macro setting and experiment. Let’s say you have a point and shoot camera with macro and a flash on the camera. You might have to go to a manual mode to do this, but…
Put your item on a nice background surface. I like to just put it in a ring box or on some velour. Zoom out at least half-way so that you will be working about a foot away from the ring. Be sure that you get focus confirmation. Shoot a picture USING flash. Check the LCD for the result. If you have overexposed the item, use the EV adjustment to reduce the exposure. For small items, I often find that I need to reduce the exposure by about 1.0 EV. (That’s -1.0 EV.) It is better to have the item properly exposed and the background underexposed, so just worry about the jewelry for now. Using a deliberate underexposure will cure the “too shiny” appearance of the stones and metal.
If you know how, you can use either full manual exposure or just Aperture Priority and choose a smaller aperture (larger number) to make the ring show up in better focus.
If you have a DSLR, post your question again stating the kind of camera that you have and the lens that you are using and we will give more details.
If you are doing any image processing at all, such with Photoshop or it’s cousins, you can crop the image to 800 pixels by 800 pixels and use Supersize images on eBay. I always use the Picture Pack when I am selling anything of any value.
Check out http://www.members.aol.com/swf08302/heartring.jpg which I did a while ago using a Nikon Coolpix 5400 exactly as described above. I do NOT think this is acceptable, but we decided not to sell the ring anyhow, so I didn’t bother to do a better job. It’s still better than some I’ve seen. I don’t keep old photos of sold items around, so I don’t have much to show you, but at least you know that it’s possible to get an acceptable result even without spending huge dollars on your equipment.
The key things to remember are:
-Macro setting
-Zoom out to get about a foot away from your subject
-Use flash
-Try different EV settings and expect that you will end up with a negative EV setting, such as -1.0 EV.
I happen to have some photos from old auctions on an FTP site. I think that these were all taken with a 3 MP Nikon Coolpix 885.
http://members.aol.com/swf08302/carvina.jpg
http://members.aol.com/swf08302/skullfront.jpg
http://members.aol.com/swf08302/konkontu.jpg
(The patch is about 4 inches long.)
Here are a couple of coin photos done exactly as described, but using a D200:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/1190290008/
I did these with my Nikon Coolpix 4600, just to show you what a really inexpensive camera can do. It’s a 4 MP camera that I paid about $150 for a couple of years ago.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/577501964/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/577501976/
Here are a couple more auction photos done as described, using a 60 mm macro lens on a DSLR:
800 x 800 http://www.members.aol.com/swf08302/yorkie01.jpg
800 x 800 http://www.members.aol.com/swf08302/montblanc05.jpg
800 x 800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04/412244168/ (light box)
800 x 800 http://www.flickr.com/photos/7189769@N04/412244164/
I finally posted that auction: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=ADME:L:LCA:US:11&item=200126973404
If you are interested in a full description of an SLR set-up, post a new question and ask specifically for that information. I’m gathering from the nature of your question that you might be in the point and shoot market.
Fujifilm Finepix S5200
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