Hands up all those who want to take good shots with their digital camera but you can't because :
( 1 ) You think that you're a cr*p photographer, or
( 2 ) You think that you have a cr*p camera.
I bet we have one or three takers, right? Ok, let's do something about it. This thread is aimed at anyone who just cannot get a good pic, it's not aimed at teaching you all the ins and outs of your camera, different settings, etc. If, at the end of this, you can get some decent shots with your camera, we can move on to the next step. You will need 3 things to continue, a digital camera
, the camera manual and a tin of beans (preferably Heinz 'cos they taste nice). Seriously, we're going to take some pics of a tin of beans, I bet most people here are trying to take gorgeous pics of their nails because they see gorgeous pics here in Geek, they then get disheartened because their nail pics never come up to scratch. The solution? We'll all use the same subject so that we can gauge one pic against the others. So then, get yer beanz out!
The camera and the manual:
Contrary to popular opinion, I hate reading the manual.... I just wanna mess around with the gadget stuff 'til I get it right. However, if you really want to get the best from your new (or not so new) toy, you will need to have a good read through your manual. For now though, you only need to check a couple of things.
Picture Size: Make sure the picture size is set to a large setting. Mine is set to 2560 x 1920, this will give us a picture that's much too big but means that we can play around with it afterwards to get the desired result.
Point & Shoot: Put your camera on the simple setting, ie, the setting where the camera does all of the work and all you have to do is actually take the pic. This is denoted on my camera with a red heart, no doubt yours will be different. If your camera doesnt have lots of different settings, just take your pic as normal.
Steady: This is probably THE most important part. Rest your camera on something solid, ie, a pile of books, tabletop etc. Camera should be about 12 inches away from the Beans with the natural light behind you or above you. Look at your screen, depress your shutter button halfway to set the focus. On most cameras you should get some indication that the focus is correct, I get a green rectangle on screen when the focus is correct, yours may be different. If you're happy with this, depress the shutter button fully without moving the camera. If you've got really shaky hands, use the timer on your camera to take the pic. Set it up as previously stated making sure that the focus is correct. Next take your finger off the shutter button and set the timer for 2 - 5 seconds. Without moving the camera, depress the shutter button fully and move away from the camera.
Macro: For this photo, we'll leave the macro turned OFF
Below are the settings I used and the resulting pictures.
PIC 1 - http://www.thenaildirectory.com/beans-big.jpg (this is too big to display here in Geek. Click on the link to see the pic, some browsers might automatically resize the pic to suit your screen, if this happens you should get an option to show the pic at its proper size. Internet Explorer displays a little 'stretch' symbol at the bottom right of the pic.)
PIC 3 - This is a portion that has been cropped from the full size pic. Notice that you can quite clearly see the smiley that I've drawn (with great difficulty) even though this picture was taken with the macro turned OFF.
Settings:
2560 x 1920 High quality
point & shoot setting
midday
reasonably good light coming from behind
black background
No house lights on
No flash
I hope this is of some benefit to someone in here. Remember that to succeed you've got to take plenty of photos and then select the best. Once you've gotten to grips and taken a good pic of your bean tin, you'll grow in confidence and can them move on to bigger and better things.
( 1 ) You think that you're a cr*p photographer, or
( 2 ) You think that you have a cr*p camera.
I bet we have one or three takers, right? Ok, let's do something about it. This thread is aimed at anyone who just cannot get a good pic, it's not aimed at teaching you all the ins and outs of your camera, different settings, etc. If, at the end of this, you can get some decent shots with your camera, we can move on to the next step. You will need 3 things to continue, a digital camera
, the camera manual and a tin of beans (preferably Heinz 'cos they taste nice). Seriously, we're going to take some pics of a tin of beans, I bet most people here are trying to take gorgeous pics of their nails because they see gorgeous pics here in Geek, they then get disheartened because their nail pics never come up to scratch. The solution? We'll all use the same subject so that we can gauge one pic against the others. So then, get yer beanz out! The camera and the manual:
Contrary to popular opinion, I hate reading the manual.... I just wanna mess around with the gadget stuff 'til I get it right. However, if you really want to get the best from your new (or not so new) toy, you will need to have a good read through your manual. For now though, you only need to check a couple of things.
Picture Size: Make sure the picture size is set to a large setting. Mine is set to 2560 x 1920, this will give us a picture that's much too big but means that we can play around with it afterwards to get the desired result.
Point & Shoot: Put your camera on the simple setting, ie, the setting where the camera does all of the work and all you have to do is actually take the pic. This is denoted on my camera with a red heart, no doubt yours will be different. If your camera doesnt have lots of different settings, just take your pic as normal.
Steady: This is probably THE most important part. Rest your camera on something solid, ie, a pile of books, tabletop etc. Camera should be about 12 inches away from the Beans with the natural light behind you or above you. Look at your screen, depress your shutter button halfway to set the focus. On most cameras you should get some indication that the focus is correct, I get a green rectangle on screen when the focus is correct, yours may be different. If you're happy with this, depress the shutter button fully without moving the camera. If you've got really shaky hands, use the timer on your camera to take the pic. Set it up as previously stated making sure that the focus is correct. Next take your finger off the shutter button and set the timer for 2 - 5 seconds. Without moving the camera, depress the shutter button fully and move away from the camera.
Macro: For this photo, we'll leave the macro turned OFF
Below are the settings I used and the resulting pictures.
PIC 1 - http://www.thenaildirectory.com/beans-big.jpg (this is too big to display here in Geek. Click on the link to see the pic, some browsers might automatically resize the pic to suit your screen, if this happens you should get an option to show the pic at its proper size. Internet Explorer displays a little 'stretch' symbol at the bottom right of the pic.)
*********************
PIC 2 - This is the full size pic resized to 640 x 480 for displaying on a web page.
**********************
PIC 3 - This is a portion that has been cropped from the full size pic. Notice that you can quite clearly see the smiley that I've drawn (with great difficulty) even though this picture was taken with the macro turned OFF.
Settings:
2560 x 1920 High quality
point & shoot setting
midday
reasonably good light coming from behind
black background
No house lights on
No flash
I hope this is of some benefit to someone in here. Remember that to succeed you've got to take plenty of photos and then select the best. Once you've gotten to grips and taken a good pic of your bean tin, you'll grow in confidence and can them move on to bigger and better things.
