A lot of people ask me how I get such great shots of my collection. It is really easy so here is a short tutorial. I use an inexpensive point-and-shoot camera, a cheap desk tripod, and room lighting. If you use better equipment you can get stunning results, particularly from lighting, but here I will show how to get great results from realistic situations.
The rules of thumb:
1) NO FLASH - shut the flash off on the camera as it will blow out the details.
2) Learn to turn on the MACRO mode - it will let your camera focus close up.
3) Use a TRIPOD - you need to make sure there is no camera shake.
4) Use the TIMER on your camera. Let it do a 10 second countdown since you will not be able to hold the thing steady enough to let the light in, and even on a tripod any movement from depressing the shutter will cause a visible shake.
5) Set the ISO (speed) to 100. You want to let in a lot of light.
6) You can let the camera set the shutter and aperture, but if you control them you can get extra special results - see below.
Here I have to take a quick shot of something and make it look nice. Nothing special - I set up on white paper and get ready:
Now for my settings. The flower tells me the macro is on, you can see the flash is off, I like to use RAW, which lets me change the white balance, but JPG is just fine and is easy for beginners. This would work fine for this shot. But I also want to do something special - I want everything in fine focus. I will focus on the tank turret, but if I just shoot the shot it will be in focus and the rest will be blurry.
So, I set the shutter speed to a very slow speed - here 1/6 of a second. The longer the shutter stays open the more all things will be in focus. If you have a helmet with a badge in front use this to make everything come into focus.
I shoot it, dump it into the computer, crop the photo and here is the result:
But now I want to make an artistic shot with the badge in focus but the document fade out of focus. Here is the setup:
Nothing special, but the settings will do the trick. By changing the speed of the shutter to a fast 1/125 of a second it will blur the background. The open aperature of 2.8 will also help with the blur, making just the badge in focus.
The result:
Now, if you get even a cheap lighting solution with diffusion panels you will get spectacular results. This is available on Amazon and Ebay in a variety of countries for very little money. Just get one that runs on the electricity in your country.
I hope this helps!
Marc
With the right lighting and settings:
The rules of thumb:
1) NO FLASH - shut the flash off on the camera as it will blow out the details.
2) Learn to turn on the MACRO mode - it will let your camera focus close up.
3) Use a TRIPOD - you need to make sure there is no camera shake.
4) Use the TIMER on your camera. Let it do a 10 second countdown since you will not be able to hold the thing steady enough to let the light in, and even on a tripod any movement from depressing the shutter will cause a visible shake.
5) Set the ISO (speed) to 100. You want to let in a lot of light.
6) You can let the camera set the shutter and aperture, but if you control them you can get extra special results - see below.
Here I have to take a quick shot of something and make it look nice. Nothing special - I set up on white paper and get ready:
Now for my settings. The flower tells me the macro is on, you can see the flash is off, I like to use RAW, which lets me change the white balance, but JPG is just fine and is easy for beginners. This would work fine for this shot. But I also want to do something special - I want everything in fine focus. I will focus on the tank turret, but if I just shoot the shot it will be in focus and the rest will be blurry.
So, I set the shutter speed to a very slow speed - here 1/6 of a second. The longer the shutter stays open the more all things will be in focus. If you have a helmet with a badge in front use this to make everything come into focus.
I shoot it, dump it into the computer, crop the photo and here is the result:
But now I want to make an artistic shot with the badge in focus but the document fade out of focus. Here is the setup:
Nothing special, but the settings will do the trick. By changing the speed of the shutter to a fast 1/125 of a second it will blur the background. The open aperature of 2.8 will also help with the blur, making just the badge in focus.
The result:
Now, if you get even a cheap lighting solution with diffusion panels you will get spectacular results. This is available on Amazon and Ebay in a variety of countries for very little money. Just get one that runs on the electricity in your country.
I hope this helps!
Marc
With the right lighting and settings:
Glenn 
still, great advice here. Glenn 
Comment