ArtboyAlexander
New member
I\'m looking for a digital camera so i can post my minis as well as other art works on a web site. Wherever i look online they always have a huge list of extra stuff... what do i actually need and what can i skip????
Camera Accesories
- Thread starter ArtboyAlexander
- Start date
Hi Artboy!
Well, basicly you will need a camera with a decent macro funktion. If you get the rigth one, you\'ll need no extras for the camera itself, except maybe for a remote trigger (I\'ll come back to that later).
In addition you will need some good lighting (much light is allways important if you want to take real good photos of your miniatures, later more) and a tripod, to give the camera a firm stand.
Why? Due to the macro nature of your photos, it will happen, that you\'ll get some longer exposure time of your camera. Sometimes up to a second or even more, depending partly on how much light you use. To prevent the photos to become blurred beyond recognition with such an exposure time, the camera has to be set up on a firm stand. Best way to archive this (and to stay variable in heigth and ankle) would be a tripod.
The second important extra would be a remote. With it, you can trigger the camera without touching it, thus avoiding to shake it when triggering. You don\'t necessaryly need a remote if your camera has a decent timer function. Then you can press the timed trigger, step back and let the cam do the rest. Depending on the brand of the camera, remotes come as non-cable or cable remotes, and are most of the time expensive, unless the camera is allready equiped with one in the first place.
The remote trigger for my Nikon Coolpix 995 is a cable remote and as extra equipment quite expensive. But the Coolpix has a nice 10-or-6-second-timer and it works fine for me, so I will save the remote for later.
The lighting:
To see al the details on such a small miniature there has to be mucho ligth when taking the photos. So you will have to get yourself some nice lamps and bulbs.
(Check out my site and see how my photo setup works)
I use a couple of desk lamps. This way I can position the ligth sources where ever I need them on the miniature to get a good ligthing.
Usually a digital camera has a white balancing function, so you will have not so much trouble with yellow or blue tinted ligths. Again my Coolpix has some very good and wide ranged white balancing function.
Well, to sum it up again here are the most important extras:
- Good Ligthing, a couple of independent ligthsources for better control, e.g. desklamps with daylight flouroscent bulbs
- remote or selftimer, to avoid shaking while triggering
-tripod for firm stand, to avoid shaking while exposing
There are also close-up lenses for those d-cameras without a sufficient macro function (if they have a tread to attach extra lenses to!). But the macro function is slowly becoming a standart for the newer digital cameras.
My experience with the Nikon Coolpix 995 are very good and you can see a lot of samples of its qualities on my site (check out W.I.P images and Confrontation Fire Elemental close-ups).
So I can personally recommend this Digitalcamera very much. (And it\'s price has dropped dramaticly since I bought it two month ago. Grrrr...!
)
And the new model, the Coolpix 5000 is even better, with a higher resolution.
(5 Megapixel!)
Hope this helps you a bit in your search.
Well, basicly you will need a camera with a decent macro funktion. If you get the rigth one, you\'ll need no extras for the camera itself, except maybe for a remote trigger (I\'ll come back to that later).
In addition you will need some good lighting (much light is allways important if you want to take real good photos of your miniatures, later more) and a tripod, to give the camera a firm stand.
Why? Due to the macro nature of your photos, it will happen, that you\'ll get some longer exposure time of your camera. Sometimes up to a second or even more, depending partly on how much light you use. To prevent the photos to become blurred beyond recognition with such an exposure time, the camera has to be set up on a firm stand. Best way to archive this (and to stay variable in heigth and ankle) would be a tripod.
The second important extra would be a remote. With it, you can trigger the camera without touching it, thus avoiding to shake it when triggering. You don\'t necessaryly need a remote if your camera has a decent timer function. Then you can press the timed trigger, step back and let the cam do the rest. Depending on the brand of the camera, remotes come as non-cable or cable remotes, and are most of the time expensive, unless the camera is allready equiped with one in the first place.
The remote trigger for my Nikon Coolpix 995 is a cable remote and as extra equipment quite expensive. But the Coolpix has a nice 10-or-6-second-timer and it works fine for me, so I will save the remote for later.
The lighting:
To see al the details on such a small miniature there has to be mucho ligth when taking the photos. So you will have to get yourself some nice lamps and bulbs.
(Check out my site and see how my photo setup works)
I use a couple of desk lamps. This way I can position the ligth sources where ever I need them on the miniature to get a good ligthing.
Usually a digital camera has a white balancing function, so you will have not so much trouble with yellow or blue tinted ligths. Again my Coolpix has some very good and wide ranged white balancing function.
Well, to sum it up again here are the most important extras:
- Good Ligthing, a couple of independent ligthsources for better control, e.g. desklamps with daylight flouroscent bulbs
- remote or selftimer, to avoid shaking while triggering
-tripod for firm stand, to avoid shaking while exposing
There are also close-up lenses for those d-cameras without a sufficient macro function (if they have a tread to attach extra lenses to!). But the macro function is slowly becoming a standart for the newer digital cameras.
My experience with the Nikon Coolpix 995 are very good and you can see a lot of samples of its qualities on my site (check out W.I.P images and Confrontation Fire Elemental close-ups).
So I can personally recommend this Digitalcamera very much. (And it\'s price has dropped dramaticly since I bought it two month ago. Grrrr...!
)And the new model, the Coolpix 5000 is even better, with a higher resolution.
(5 Megapixel!)
Hope this helps you a bit in your search.
ArtboyAlexander
New member
Thanks for the help Brushguy!
Re: Camera Accessories
Hi,
I use the Sony DSC-F707 (5MP). The nice thing about the camera is that it lets you do all the manual settings for it (shutter speed, aperture, etc), so even though the lighting is not quite good, you can still get a good pic. It has a 58mm lens that allows you to do optical (real) zoom in up to 5x with no decreasing quality on the pic.
Plus, I just bought lens filter, UV, Polarize(outdoor) and Fluorescent (indoor) to help increasing the quality of the image.
If you see my work on confrontation stuff here, those were taken with not very good lighting and yet they came out good.
Hi,
I use the Sony DSC-F707 (5MP). The nice thing about the camera is that it lets you do all the manual settings for it (shutter speed, aperture, etc), so even though the lighting is not quite good, you can still get a good pic. It has a 58mm lens that allows you to do optical (real) zoom in up to 5x with no decreasing quality on the pic.
Plus, I just bought lens filter, UV, Polarize(outdoor) and Fluorescent (indoor) to help increasing the quality of the image.
If you see my work on confrontation stuff here, those were taken with not very good lighting and yet they came out good.
Oh, I forgot.
My Coolpix works with a special rechargeable battery. The recharger comes with the camera and I also got me a second battery. The extra AC power supply is a bit pricey. And right now I get along fine with the two rechargeables.
Also make sure to buy a larger media card to save the images to. Usually they only put a 16MB card into the camera. And this is very small. I bougth me an additional 128MB smart media card.
Much better this way.
Cheers
My Coolpix works with a special rechargeable battery. The recharger comes with the camera and I also got me a second battery. The extra AC power supply is a bit pricey. And right now I get along fine with the two rechargeables.
Also make sure to buy a larger media card to save the images to. Usually they only put a 16MB card into the camera. And this is very small. I bougth me an additional 128MB smart media card.
Much better this way.
Cheers
Hi Brushguy, I\'m also planing to get a Nikon 995, seems you are quite satisfied with this one.
I\'m just curious to know why you bought the Nikon and not a similar model from Olympus etc? Do you know any differences between the brands? I tried to get some information about this topic but it\'s a bit difficult as most people in the photoshops can\'t tell anything about this.
Thanks
I\'m just curious to know why you bought the Nikon and not a similar model from Olympus etc? Do you know any differences between the brands? I tried to get some information about this topic but it\'s a bit difficult as most people in the photoshops can\'t tell anything about this.
Thanks
