I have been learning SO slowly how to take good pics, and I'm definitely still having learning and making mistakes. Other people seem to take better shots than I do, too!dolldivatude wrote:Great pics Mikan. I love all the scenery. Silver Crescent is such a pretty doll.
You guys take such great shots of your dolls. I felt so awkward the other day when I went to a mall near my neighborhood. My pics didn't come out well at all.
Here are my own notes for photography, based on a rather automatic digital camera:
To get BOTH doll (held in one's hand) and background in focus is hard - and I think you ideally need a lot of good strong light (because strong light increases your "depth of focus"). Even with these photos I posted here, you'll see that one or the other is somewhat blurry. Only if I put the doll down and back up can I hope to get SOME kind of sense of focus of foreground doll and background scenery - but then she's not filling much of the screen. The shot with 280 in the background I took about 4 shots with different camera settings, AND had the doll set down further away than I could hold her, AND had a reasonable quantity of light... only one came out with both doll and highway in reasonable focus. ARGH! I think I may need Photoshop after all! Or just post a variety - some with doll in focus, some with background, some with no doll and background only!
For these shots I used a manual macro setting to get close-ups of the doll, then set it to automatic focus, as well as try manual "far" settings, to get contrasting shots of far-away stuff in focus. I'm not sure exactly which ones worked right - it probably depends on the light. At least I get a variety of shots I can examine later in detail, and hopefully one out of the lot will be OK. But the manually set macro IS definitely necessary for close-ups.
In a darker environment you'll probably need a very steady hand unless you are using a flash, because the shutter has to stay open longer to get enough light to form the picture. Even then, some digital cameras like mine handle low light rather poorly, making everything look very grainy (worse than 35mm cameras using low-light film, IMHO!).
For flash photos I've found I do need the 2 sheets of white paper to tone down the flash - and maybe some light reflectors someday.
Hmmm, maybe we should start a photography tips thread in the How-To section!
