[Ashbys]

Susan,
I did a quick check and if I got the right camera, you do have aptiture contol as well as shutter speed.

It may will be hidden inside the menu , and many of the camera now just ask if you want a lighter or darker picture, inside many of the offered menus.

Some are even hidden with pictures , whihc of course makes no sense to me , but the backlight option may will be built into the camera along with a marco lens which, can be just a button click.

Just my typical .. opinion =)

Ash

[Irish]

I'll check the manual, Garry. The len area definitely does not have anything that is adjustable. But you may be right and it's all software instead.

And as it looks like Mike and I might have lots of time tomorrow to read (by candle light) it will be a good project.

Susan

[squbrigg]

Lynn's advice is spot on Susan. (I only have to look at his picture to see that he knows what he's doing!)

Those kits will improve most article photography "some", but they are still limited. A third light source is useful, for back lighting or for light directed from above on the face of a carving to generate soft shadows to accent lines. As he mentions, distance from your background is also important, as can be the colour of the background itself.

Camera wise, while the Kodak is a nice camera for most applications, I found mine limited when I wanted to shoot articles like carvings, models or to pick out an object and isolate it from the background. A camera with full flexability is required to be able to do this: manual focus, zoom lens, a tripod, and full control over the apature (speed, F-stop, and sensitivity). All the controls of a good 35mm or medium format camera, but in digital. I found what I wanted in a Panisonic Lumix DMC FZ30.

Your tripod "may" also be too small for the camera, a 6" tripod doesn't have much weight or spread of the legs and the shudder working may generate enough movement to show up.

Bob

[AlArchie]

Susan, even if your camera doesn't have a direct link to adjusting the f-stop, there may be another way to do this. Check the little function dial on the top or back of the camera. Some have icon pictures (like my Canon) that look like a face , for portraits, mountains for landscape, flowers for macro, and maybe even a few others. These icons actually adjust the f-stops. If you have these icons, try using the one for either portraits or the "flowery" one. These two will greatly reduce the depth of field (how much of the background is in focus) and open the aperature to allow more light. The shutter speed will be automatically adjusted and may just give you a little better lighted picture. Make sure you get your auto focus window on the part of the subject you really want to be in focus, as anything in the peripheral area will be blurred. That should eliminate any background detail. You'll have to play with these settings a bit as they are a bit more tricky than the "auto" function.

Al

[Irish]

Originally Posted by squbrigg

A camera with full flexability is required to be able to do this: manual focus, zoom lens, a tripod, and full control over the apature (speed, F-stop, and sensitivity). All the controls of a good 35mm or medium format camera, but in digital.

Bob

OH! FOTF - LOL

Not one bit of that is any good when the operator is mechanically impaired ... well beyond mechanically challenged ... a mechanical idijit!

I have copied all this great info and am off the actually ... watch out, here it comes ... read the directions that came with the camera!

Susan

[Bob_in_TN]

Al hit the nail on the head! By changing the aperature,you change the depth of field and eliminate the need to position a certain distance from the background. This should help in Susan's case, cause it sounds as though she is limited by the size of her light box. All of these suggestions will give you a good starting point, but you usually need to play around with your individual camera and acessories.

[Lynn O. Doughty]

Back before the digital camera the way to take great portrait photos required that you have a Single Lens Reflex camera with a 135mm lens, a tripod cause no mater how steady your are you just can not hold that camera steady enough to keep the picture from blurring, a decent light source and some sort of background if you thought that was necessary.

The 135mm lens was used at it allowed you to get far enough back from subject so the features wouldn't be distorted by the lens and it also had a narrow area of focus which meant that anything a few inches in front or a few inches behind the subject would be out of focus. That was great cause you only want your subject in focus. Unfortunately, digital cameras just do not operate like film cameras do, believe me I still use both. I have a 135mm digital lens which takes a completely different photo of something than my 135mm film camera. It's a Nikon so there is no question about the quality of equipment. I have found that I get better results using the 70-18mm zoom. I don't bother with f-stops, I just set it on the "portrait" stop and click away.

[Irish]

I so appreciate all the ideas and advice here. I think,since you guys are sharing so much information, that I am going to work through the ideas one at a time.

If I try them all at once I won't know which is working for me, which one or ones really made a difference.

I have gone to a tall tripod that is setting on the floor. I have added extra light sources as back lights. What I see at this point is that my shadows are good and strong, the photo is clear but I am picking up the yellow tones from the incandescent lights that I added this morning.

So ... as soon as the roads are clear of ice or I get a few minutes to shop online ... I think I need to get some more true light bulbs ... ?????? Isn't it the incandescent that is giving me all the yellow ???? As Lynn is pointing out - a DECENT light source

Thank you all!!!!

Susan

[RoadKingMN]

Incandescent lights and flourescent lights have a different color effects than natural sunlight. There are different films that compensated for both incandescent and flourescent light sources. With digital cameras you have to use software to change the image or use lights that better replicate the daylight spectrum. You might want to take a look at this tutorial about product photography. He does a pretty good job of explaining the process.

http://www.dansdata.com/phototute.htm

[BobD]

Susan,
You should be able to just adjust your white balance (again in those camera settings). Digital cameras have different ways of intrepreting the light that comes in. You can set the camera to interpret the light the way you want to.

Another thought is to replace your incandescents with the compact florescents. We did a test in our photo studio and found that most digital cameras (From my kodak point and shoot the whole way up to Greg, our photog's high end Cannon) can automatically adjust for that wavelength of light easier than incandescents. And they are less expensive, usually, than the true daylight bulbs (which are usually just a different frequency of florescent bulb...at least my Ott light and Blue Max lights are...

Bob