Hi guys
I recently wanted to sell some 15mm troops on Ebay and found my Pentax Optio E30 digital camera wasn't up to the task.
I also want to try taking battle pictures a little further down the line.
Can anyone recommend a good camera that I could look for on Ebay at a reasonable price.
Cheers.
Rob
Good camera for pictures.
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Robert241167
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Phaze_of_the_Moon
- Senior Corporal - Destroyer
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Your biggest problem is probably lighting. Make a box out of white card, get a strong light and something to difuse it (a piece of bedsheet will do). Even the cheapest camera should suffice.
Battle pictures will have a similar problem. An auxilliary flash with a mediocre camera will do better than an expensive one. Probably all you'll need to do is make sure your camera meters durimg the exposure.
Battle pictures will have a similar problem. An auxilliary flash with a mediocre camera will do better than an expensive one. Probably all you'll need to do is make sure your camera meters durimg the exposure.
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Robert241167
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You will need a camera that has some kind of "macro" mode for close up photography, otherwise it will be impossible to focus on something so close to the lens. Most modern digital cameras will handle that quite well. If you want to do it properly, I'd also white balance the camera before taking any pictures. How to do this will vary between cameras so just keep in mind to check for "macro" and "white balance" in the respective user manual. Some kind of mini-tripod or beanbag support will also help.
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miffedofreading
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Biggest enemy when taking photos of tiny soldiers is depth of field. Thanks to the physics behind camera lenses all cheap point and shoot digital cameras have a very small lens, which equals great depth of field. In other words any cheap digital camera should be able to take great pics of model soldiers. It's my digital SLR that needs a bit of careful setting up because of it's inherently larger lens.
I used to get great pics with my old Nikon 995 which is very crude by todays standards.
Agree with other comments though, it is tricky to get lighting right when you are so close to the object.
I used to get great pics with my old Nikon 995 which is very crude by todays standards.
Agree with other comments though, it is tricky to get lighting right when you are so close to the object.
Through my own experience I have found it best NOT to go close to the figs.............. with most digi cams turning out photos on 5mp or more why get in close to take the shot?
instead, take a shot from further away and crop the photo to get the figs you want in frame, with good depth of field............. with the 5mp+ cameras you can crop a lot of photo expand the rest and still get good details!
easy peasy!
jon
instead, take a shot from further away and crop the photo to get the figs you want in frame, with good depth of field............. with the 5mp+ cameras you can crop a lot of photo expand the rest and still get good details!
easy peasy!
jon
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MarkSieber
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Here are things that have helped me--some already mentioned. They may seem obvious but if you haven't taken closeups before may not have occurred to you. These suggestions are for the point-and-shoot cameras, SLR's have more options.
-Use a tripod or set the camera on the table, on top of a book etc.
-Use the Macro setting, and take several pictures at slightly different distances--then choose the one where the depth of field focus coincides with what you want to highlight
-Don't use a flash, or if you do, deflect it upwards
-Use the timer setting on the camera, the one that's meant for running around to get yourself in the picture. Then your hands are off and it's steadier.
-use a neutral background--gray is often best.
-Set the white point balance to match the lighting in the room--this can really help to get better color, which can be trickier to improve in an image editor. The procedure is usually to activate the option, and shoot a 'picture' of a white surface in the room. It sets the camera to read white as neutral in the specific lighting in that room.
-Like chubooga says, take photos at the highest resolution setting and crop.
-Use an image processing program to improve the picture. If you use a MAC, iPhoto is a good place to start. On a PC, if you don't have Photoshop Elements or Photoshop, Gimp is free to download and does a decent job. Save your photos as indexed color to reduce the file size.
If you're buying a camera, remember that the larger megapixel counts are necessary only for very large prints. Anything from 4 to 8 mp should suffice. I have a six year old 4 mp point-and-shoot that takes better closeup pictures than my wife's new 7 mp camera--better macro & exposure controls make the difference.
Previous generation SLR's with 6 or 8 mp are far cheaper than the newer 10 mp models, but have most if not all of the same features
Native zoom of 3x is sufficient, greater zoom is hard to find in a point and shoot. Don't pay attention to the 'digital zoom'--it doesn't make for very good quality. Taking a higher resolution photo and cropping does the same thing, only better.
-Use a tripod or set the camera on the table, on top of a book etc.
-Use the Macro setting, and take several pictures at slightly different distances--then choose the one where the depth of field focus coincides with what you want to highlight
-Don't use a flash, or if you do, deflect it upwards
-Use the timer setting on the camera, the one that's meant for running around to get yourself in the picture. Then your hands are off and it's steadier.
-use a neutral background--gray is often best.
-Set the white point balance to match the lighting in the room--this can really help to get better color, which can be trickier to improve in an image editor. The procedure is usually to activate the option, and shoot a 'picture' of a white surface in the room. It sets the camera to read white as neutral in the specific lighting in that room.
-Like chubooga says, take photos at the highest resolution setting and crop.
-Use an image processing program to improve the picture. If you use a MAC, iPhoto is a good place to start. On a PC, if you don't have Photoshop Elements or Photoshop, Gimp is free to download and does a decent job. Save your photos as indexed color to reduce the file size.
If you're buying a camera, remember that the larger megapixel counts are necessary only for very large prints. Anything from 4 to 8 mp should suffice. I have a six year old 4 mp point-and-shoot that takes better closeup pictures than my wife's new 7 mp camera--better macro & exposure controls make the difference.
Previous generation SLR's with 6 or 8 mp are far cheaper than the newer 10 mp models, but have most if not all of the same features
Native zoom of 3x is sufficient, greater zoom is hard to find in a point and shoot. Don't pay attention to the 'digital zoom'--it doesn't make for very good quality. Taking a higher resolution photo and cropping does the same thing, only better.