Thanks for the info everyone.

Sandy I'll have to try that light tent like you suggested. I did manage to
take some clear pictures but it was a lot of work. I had a couple desklamps
but I don't think I used halogen bulbs. I have a 5MP digital camera with
very few settings and I have been able to take pictures but it's pretty
tough.

Usually I have to take about 5-10 pics and 1-2 of them will be in focus. I
also have to manually crop out the images and I'd like the conditions to try
and remain the same for every fly.

The really tough part is that I can't tell which of the 10 pics is good from
the viewfinder. But I wasn't using a tripod so I guess once I find the
proper distance and use a stationary camera it might be much better.

I think I used the flash also and it worked much better.. but I'll have to
experiment some more.

If you'd like to check out my site it's here -- http://myflytie.com
Sandy can I place a link to your site on mine?

Jixter

"rw" wrote in message
...
pittendrigh wrote:

RE taking closeups with a less sophisticated camera.

I struggled with film technology for years. The setups are the same
(if using film or digital) but the feedback cycle is so much faster
with
digital it's easier to get the bugs worked out.

There are two ways to photograph little things closeup (and get good
results). You need specialized flash equipment (that reduces hard
shadows,
one way or another) or you need a light tent. I used little Nikon
Coolpix
995 for a long time. You can buy cameras like that for 300 bucks these
days.
Some do a better closeup job than others. Nikon has always been good
at closeups, even in their cheaper, little digey cameras.

Digital cameras in the "consumer" class are often excellent for close-up
photography. That's because the format size (the size of the image-sensing
chip) is small compared to, say, the 35mm film format. This leads to
superior depth of field, which is very important for close-ups. The reason
for increased depth of field isn't intuitively obvious -- it has nothing
to do with the lens, for example. It's all about format size.

This advantage is not apparent in "professional" class digital cameras,
because their image-sensing chips are comparable to, or identical to, the
35mm film format.

If you have a large-format camera, to get acceptable depth-of-field in
close-up photography you need intense lighting, which allows you to reduce
the aperture (i.e., use a large f-stop). With small-format cameras this is
not so much of a problem.

--
Cut "to the chase" for my email address.