RE: [OT] Digital Camera

There are three key factors to taking good "close-ups" of figures.

1) Good lighting - even the best camera in the world can't do much with
poor lighting, and forget flash photography on objects closer than 3
feet as you will get a very washed out picture.  If you are limited to
standard indoor fluorescent lighting, then longer exposure times are a
must to get decent results, and even so your pictures will have a yellow
or blue tinge depending on the type of fluorescent light used.

When using longer exposure times, a tripod is a must for stability. 
With exposure times up to 1 second, any shakiness will translate into
blurriness in the picture.

2) Distance - contrary to popular belief, you don't need to be 6" away
from a figure to get a good "close-up".  In fact, if you are too close,
your depth of field decreases and objects that are only slightly out of
the plane of view become out of focus.	This is particularly important
if you are trying to capture entire units or an area with more than a
few inches of depth.  To achieve a longer depth of field, start further
away (2-4 feet) from the target and use the optical (not digital) zoom
function of the camera to achieve the close-up effect.

For this to work well, look for cameras with a macro function as well as
a decent (3x or greater) optical zoom.	Digital zoom does not add to the
details, as it merely interpolates between actual pixels read of a
smaller area to create a larger picture.

When using the zoom function a tripod is a must as any shakiness is
amplified by the zoom.

3) Megapixels - more is better.  Decent results can be had with 4 mega
pixels, but 5 or 6 is preferrable as they allow you to "zoom-in" by
cropping the photos afterwards without any serious loss of final picture
quality.  Most pictures for website use or printing a 4x6 look fine at 2
megapixel resolution, so if you start with a 4 megapixel image, you can
zoom in and crop 50% of the area and still have a respectable picture.

I personally use a Nikon 4500 Coolpix with only 4 megapixels resolution
and it does well in shooting our games and monthly miniature
competition.  The bigger factors in the picture quality are usually the
lighting (natural light is best) and whether or not I used a tripod.

Hope this helps,

--Binhan

damosan@comcast.net wrote:
> I'll be running a few demo games over the course of the next few
months and one of the stipulations is that I take photos of the games.
> 
> No biggy...so I need a digital camera which is better than the PoS
that I presently have which is fine and dandy for "regular" pics but
really stinks on close ups.
> 
> So my question to your listers with digitals: I need a DC which is
capable of taking close ups but doesn't cost and arm and a leg. 
Suggestions?
> 
> --
> Damo
>