Hello.

I'm going crazy! I just got a Toshiba PDR-M3 digital camera to film my figure model kits (about 10 to 15 inches high). Almost all of them are coming out blurry. But there is one picture that came out perfect, so I know my camera is capable of great pictures, if I can figure out what the variables are that made that picture perfect.

I took the pictures outside in the shadow that my house makes at around 6:30PM. There seemed to be real good light, that as not too bright. There was no direct sun on the kits. My wife held up posterboard directly behind the kit for a background color (light gray).

Would I want to use macro mode for this type of photography? If so, how close should I to the figure when shooting in macro mode? Should I be fully extending the zoom? When do I want to use macro for my kits as opposed to standard mode with with fully zooming in?

My camera has 3x optical zoom. So when I try to have the figure take up the whole picture, I need to zoom all the way, which requires me to stand about 4 to 5 feet back (any further back and the image will not be filling the screen) when filming it. I would have to go even closer to the kit if I wanted to film a closeup of the face, etc.

Also, I took 5 pictures of my wife in a green shirt (some indoors, some outdoors) and all of them showed her shirt being brown! Is this a flaw of the camera that I can fix or do I potentially have a bad camera?

Maybe all these problems would be less evident with a better camera??

Thanks,

Dave

-- Dave Tomarchio (percy69@home.com), October 01, 1999

Answers

I don't have a Toshiba PDR-M3 (my digicam is a Minolta Dimage EX 1500) but I do take a lot of what I call "product shots", i.e., objects that vary between 4" and 10".

If you got one perfect exposure then let's assume the camera is OK. When pictures are blurry, this is generally a result of one or more of the following:

1. You are too close for the non-macro mode (ascertain the minimum focusing distance in the spec list in your manual and use a tape measure to check that you are within a safe distance; since the objects you are photographing are relatively large, I don't think this is your problem); 2. You are moving your camera when you take the picture (use a tripod!); 3. You camera is unable to focus (this is a good reason to use a tripod since you can examine the LCD image at your leisure to see if it is in focus - however, I do realize that LCD's are not easily readable to determine this level of detail).

Number 3 generally results when (a) the camera is trying to focus on a "hole" in the image, (b) an area of the image that does not have enough contrast for it to focus, or (c) because the autofocus sensor will only operate when there are vertical lines present in the image. With regard to (c), if your camera will hold focus when the shutter release is pressed half-way, try turning the camera 45 degrees, press the shutter release half-way and hold it, turn the camera back to recompose and take the picture.

With regard to green shirts coming out brown in various lighting conditions, I would suspect the sensors. I would photograph a standard color chart under several different kinds of lighting to see just what the sensors are seeing.

-- Albert Klee (ajlee@fuse.net), October 01, 1999.