QUOTE (woodcote @ 30 May 2013, 14:42)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>Tutorials from you all please
Ember, do you make dioramas for some of your shots, or are they all parts of your tracks?
I struggle to take good close ups of HO (1/64 scale) cars - but maybe it is my camera is a bit cheap and the macro setting is not adjustable. So I get part of the car in focus and the rest out of...
I think you are struggling with something called depth of field.
The closer you get to something the harder it is to get all of it in focus. This is partly down to how close you are and partly to the aperture setting on the camera.
If you can manually override your settings (something you can do on better compact camera not just SLRs) you need to set your aperture as small as you can (biggest number - F16 or F32 as opposed to F2 or F4). This allows the lens to focus on more of the scene in terms of how much depth is in focus. The down side is that the smaller the aperture the less light is let in meaning your exposure time is longer. So you have to use a tripod to hold the camera steady or the picture will blur.
And finally - the camera will auto focus on the nearest object in its focusing spot. If you can manually focus you need to focus on a spot that is about 1/3 of the way into your desired depth of field. In other words - if your camera is capable of fitting in the whole car in focus (but only just) you need to focus on a point that is 1/3 of the distance from the front of the car to the back (in terms of how far it is from the lens). If you can't manually focus but your camera will hold focus with a half-depressed button - you can focus on something the desired distance into the depth of field then swing the camera round on its tripod to shoot the car. Make sure the object you focus on is mid grey and lit the same as the car as this will affect the camera's choice of exposure length.
For ultimate clarity use a remote shutter release or the self-timer option as a finger pressing the shutter can slightly shake the camera and very slightly blur the image. If you have an SLR camera with a mirror up option then use this as well as this reduces camera shake.
