LEGO Fail

[jeriendhal]

I may end up e-mailing DMM about his photography techniques. At minimum I'm going to have to use a camera with finer controls than my wife's snapper. I'm getting a hell of a lot of glare off of the minifigs and trying to focus in close to them is almost impossible.

Comments

[balorn.livejournal.com]

If you're getting a lot of glare, I'm guessing you're using a flash. Ideally you'll want to use a longer exposure time and no flash. Set the camera up on a tripod or something else where it won't move, and use a remote or the camera's self-timer so it doesn't get jostled when you press the button.

I suggest getting a camera with a fully manual mode, or at least aperture priority (often labeled "Av"). Ideally a DSLR but you can get some point-and-shoots with that option as well. Personally I'm partial to Canon. Here's a good forum about photography in general and Canon cameras in particular.

Once you get into either manual mode or aperture priority, I'd suggest lowering the ISO to whatever's reasonable for your camera, adjusting the aperture depending on how deep you want your depth of field, and let it keep the shutter open as long as it needs for a good exposure.

As for focusing on things that are close, how close you can do that depends on the camera and lens. Some cameras have a special mode for it, and some will indicate how close an object it can focus on. The control or indicator is usually either called "Macro" or has a picture of a flower.

[kairyuu.livejournal.com]

Shooting something so small you should probably using macro. Most point-and-shoots have a macro function. Usually it's a little flower icon. If the camera has any sort of manual focus... I would use it! Otherwise you need an DSLR with a macro lens, both of which are not cheap. But yeah! If you have any photo questions I'm always here to help! :)

[kodi]

Remember, if you're never going to be producing for anything except the web, you can crop a lot more than you might expect. You can shoot from up to a foot away and still have a good shot when you crop down from 6 megapixels to 600x400, a good-sized landscape panel. The further away you're able to shoot from, the less you'll struggle with depth-of-field as well. Also, I echo balorn's comments about using longer exposures to defeat the glare. Shooting with bright, shaded light sources helps, too.