How can i take decent, good pictures with my digital camera?

Question

I have a Canon A710 is. I have recently purchased this after returning a COOLPIX S6.
Im about to shoot myself in the foot because i am such a TERRIBLE photographer. What bothers me most is, i try very hard.
Mainly, i need to take pictures of Watches from close-ups to post on eBay, but they come out horribly when compared to some other pictures i see. I even purchased the white dome that difuses shadows and glares, but i can see the background wrinkles so obviously. How do these photographers take pictures with the background being so perfect? Photoshop?
Also, whats the trick to getting REAL close ups with these lower end digital cameras? I use MS, but still not good enough. Should i set the Megapixels at the highest, and superfine, and then zoom in? Would that help?

Thank you very much in advance,

aram

Answer 1

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. 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 watch on a nice background surface. I like to just put it in a piece of fabric. Zoom out at least half-way so that you will be working about a foot away from the watch. Be sure that you get focus confirmation. Shoot a picture USING flash. Check the LCD for the result. If you have overexposed the watch, 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 watch properly exposed and the background underexposed, so just worry about the watch for now. Using a deliberate underexposure will cure the "too shiny" appearance of the crystal and metal. You should also shoot just SLIGHTLY off angle so the flash will not reflect back into the camera.

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 watch show up in better focus.

Your A710 might not focus down to 2 cm (I see 5 cm listed.), but since it is a 7 MP camera, you will be able to stay back a bit and then crop to get a decent image. 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.

Here are a couple of coin photos done exactly as described:

http://www1.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=57759389/PictureID=2801041875/a=75953750_75953750/t_=75953750
http://www1.snapfish.com/slideshow/AlbumID=57759389/PictureID=2801041874/a=75953750_75953750/t_=75953750

Here are a couple more auction photos done as described:

800 x 800 http://www.members.aol.com/swf08302/yorkie01.jpg
800 x 800 http://www.members.aol.com/swf08302/montblanc05.jpg

Answer 2

well, first off, they usually use DSLR cameras with pretty nice lenses on them.

the best thing to do is to use a tripod, then use no flash. if you zoom in, dont get into the digital zoom part of the spectrum. its useless.

they get such good pics because they have the right focal length, and tend to use very nice equiptment, or they get the photo from the manufacturer.

they also may P-shop the background in, but thats doubtful.

Answer 3

Maybe you need more pixels for this job. If you don't want to buy the camera, as this sounds like a one-time only job, maybe you have a friend who can let you use their camera for a couple of shots or go with you to take the shots themself and let you upload it for your website.

Answer 4

A good source for photo tips is a site:
www.photo.net

Answer 5

You have to use the MACRO setting on your camera for close-ups!

Answer 6

try to use the macro mode. this will (hopefully) blur the background and eliminate those issues.

Answer 7

www.digital-photo-secrets.com