Sure, you should get great pictures like that. I've got a 5 megapixel, 3x optical zoom with some more digital zoom on top of that. I never zoom beyond the optical range. Also, I usually shoot 1 meg photos. For my purposes, 5 megs is overkill, and burns up storage space too quickly.
By the way, only 3 years ago, I think, this camera was $500.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
You don't need much for posting on the web. This is a 1.2 mgp shot. Choose acordingly.
Chip
Building the Rock Ridge Railroad with the slowest construction crew west of the Pecos.
loathar wrote:I know digital zoom makes for crappy pics but how much optical zoom do you really need for taking decent train pics? (maybe 1'-3') I know I want 10xto12x but that's not in the budget right now. I'm not talking about macro close ups. Just good clear pics. I see some cameras in the $100-$150 range with 4Megs,3 or 4x optical zoom and 3-5x digital zoom. Anybody getting good results with specs like this?
Loathar,
For 1-3' range, 4 Mp/3x optical will be just fine. 5x is nicer - just in case you want a closer picture but there are physical restrainsts (e.g. structures, scenery, angle, etc.) that keep you at more of a distance.
I have a Nikon with 4 Mp/3x optical and get some nice pictures and closeups with it. The one thing that I wish I had was shutter and f-stop control so that I could play with the depth of field. The capacity only comes with single-lense reflex (SLR) cameras.
Yes, avoid using digital zoom all together and try and take pictures without using the flash. Unless you have an SLR, the flash tends to wash out the colors.
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
Digital zoom is nothing more than a electronic sensor that expresses a color in a Hexdecimal (Binary) form for an image. At certain resolutions the image will fail because there is not enough color dots to fill in the gaps.
Using Optical Lenses to zoom preserves the image itself. It may still be processed into digital form by the camera and hopefully with sufficient capacity to make a good picture.
I am trying to decide if I want one of those mega 1000 dollar Rebels because I tend to have the engine and first three cars in focus while the rest of the train is out of focus bad. (Depth of field)
Space's picture is pretty good. But the total depth is what.. a few inches?
Don't confuse "Zoom" with "Close-up". They have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
You don't need ZOOM for close-ups. Most digital cameras will focus very close or have a "Macro" setting to focus as near as 2".
Your photos of models will look better at a wide-angle setting. I find that Zooming to Telephoto compresses the subject and its surroundings too much. It ends up looking more toy-like.
I know that with older 35mm cameras with changable lenses you had to have a dedicated macro lense. I'm using a mid range 35mm now with a fixed zoomable lense. 35-80mm. Started scrolling through the menu on it and saw a pic of a flower. I'm assuming this is the close up setting. Any rule of thumb for distance from object on this? 3'? 1'? 6"?. I know I'm asking a lot here site unseen but I hate to waist film. Should I have it set on the shortest zoom (35mm) when using the "flower" setting? My mom just gave me this one and I can't find the manuals for it. (Fuji 1000)
Chip-Yea! If I could get pics like that it'd be great!
Safety Valve wrote: I am trying to decide if I want one of those mega 1000 dollar Rebels because I tend to have the engine and first three cars in focus while the rest of the train is out of focus bad. (Depth of field) Space's picture is pretty good. But the total depth is what.. a few inches?
True. This is what I use now for that very reason. (taken with the 1.2 mgp)
The zoom feature is not a usable tool for model photography. When taking pictures of models, you have the physical means of getting close enough to the subject without zooming in. The zoom feature is for when you are standing outside the fence at the railyard and just can't get physically any closer .... THAT's when you use the zoom feature.
The two important features you need to look for are a manual capability and the highest f-stop ability you can afford. The higher the f-stop, the more focused your entire picture will be from for-ground to back-ground. Most digital cameras today have a macro mode which allows you to focus within inches for close-up work.
Learn to take your pictures without using any of the digital or optical zoom, you'll get much better results. As for the number of mega-pixels, unless you're planning on doing a lot of high quality large format prints, you'd be wasting your money. For posting pictures online, you need to use the smallest format to fit anyway, still leaving you 3 or 4 levels of higher quality.
As a quick example, the picture below was shot using a Canon A75 3.2 mega pixel on manual mode with a maximum f-stop of 8.0 - NO FLASH ( never use a flash ) with an exposure time of 5 seconds. Keep in mind too, this is only a $200 camera !!! The engine in the for-ground is about five inches away while the trees on the back hill are more than three feet away ....
Mark.
¡ uʍop ǝpısdn sı ǝɹnʇɐuƃıs ʎɯ 'dlǝɥ
What range is the F-stop? How should one use it? Getting the camera close to the stuff with Macro is not a problem for me. Im used to it. It's the mid-long range shots .. say 2 feet to 20 feet that challenges me.
It is a wonderful photo with the trees three feet away with good detail, but what does it do to that same shot if you reduce the F stop or increase it? To simply state the value of 8 that was used in that shot does not tell me the minimum/Maximum F stop range and does not help me decide how to use it.
Bear with me as I work through these questions. I started with a 35mm Pentrax Film and thought I did good. But eventually I got into digital a little with a tiny macro 3 meg camera and a sony camcorder that does ok but not stellar.
Here is a picture lifted from a Camcorder Video taken of the Gettysburg High Water Monument (Center of the Union Battle Line approx 1 miles or a little more from Little Round Top) on a absolutely flawless April day.
msowsun wrote:Don't confuse "Zoom" with "Close-up". They have absolutely nothing to do with each other.
loathar wrote:I know that with older 35mm cameras with changable lenses you had to have a dedicated macro lense. I'm using a mid range 35mm now with a fixed zoomable lense. 35-80mm. Started scrolling through the menu on it and saw a pic of a flower. I'm assuming this is the close up setting. Any rule of thumb for distance from object on this? 3'? 1'? 6"?. I know I'm asking a lot here site unseen but I hate to waist film. Should I have it set on the shortest zoom (35mm) when using the "flower" setting? My mom just gave me this one and I can't find the manuals for it. (Fuji 1000)
Lothar, you are correct that using the flower setting is for close up shots. The limiting distance for you will be the focal distance of your lens. At some point the subject will be too close to the lens for you to be able to bring it into focus. Any point behind that you will be able to take pictures. The thing with a macro lens is that you will be able to reproduce detail at lifesize (ie 1:1 ratio) most lenses on SLR cameras have a range about 1.5:1 or greater (trying to remember what the ranges are on my lenses) and I don't know what the reproduction will be on a point and shoot camera. The best way to figure out how to get the best "macro" picture is to try taking some pictures with the different settings. Remember to keep a note pad with you and write down the details like distance to subject, zoom length and exposure if you camera supports it (F-stop and shutter speed, but I don't think you can get this info on your camera). The reason to write them down is that you wont remember the details when you develop the film. Hope this helps.
Cheers,
Kevin
f-stops will range from about 3.2 - up. The higher the number, the greater the depth of field.
In my D&H picture that was taken at f-8.0 ( the highest setting on MY camera ), IF I could raise it up to f-16, the items right in the for-ground would be more in focus as would items even further away than my hillside. F-32 would be even better, and f-64 would be stellar.
f-stop referrs to the aperture opening, the hole in the lense that allows the light in. The higher the f-stop number, the smaller the hole. A pinhole camera has something like f-126 (?) !!!!!
THIS is where you really need your manual setting. Obviously, the smaller the lens apperture, the more light is required to get a properly exposed picture. You have two options here - either flood the scene with mega-watts of external lighting or increase the exposure time to allow the available light to "burn in". Still, don't compensate low light levels with a flash, it will destroy all color balance in close range. My D&H picture was shot only using the available room light - nothing extra.
The first picture is taken with Micro with little zoom.
This was taken with micro with NO zoom..Camera was moved closer.
Now at micro and full zoom for close up.
Now for me I found it best to work with the camera sittings to get the needed results with or without zoom and the best MP setting....
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Safety Valve,
If your interested in DSLR's take a look at the Pentax range they are $400-$500 cheaper than Canon/Nikon and the quality is no different, also Samsung now make SLR's (rebadged Pentax) and have the same Pentax lens available (rebadged) a couple of hundred $ cheaper.
I own a *istDL which was recently superceeded by the K100D it has 6.1mp sensor and a good range of features, mine cost back in september $799 with two kit lens. it now sells here for around $600 with two lenses and about $500 for the body only.
Take a look at my photobucket site, http://s42.photobucket.com/albums/e303/OZJIM
All of my recent train related images are shot with my *istDL.
James
James, Brisbane Australia
Modelling AT&SF in the 90s
A lot of this material is covered in my website for digital model photography - check it out and see, it's in my signature.
And to clear things up, a digital zoom just takes the center of an image and uses it to make things bigger. Bigger, but of lesser quality. You could do the same by taking an image and cropping out the center, diluting the number of pixels in an image. I recommed to never use the optical zoom feature, it is just a marketing tool.
And using a 5MP digital camera at a lesser setting such as 1MP is just wasting your time. You'd have 80% fewer pixels to make up your images. Memory cards are dirt cheap these days, shoot only at the highest resolution in any camera. If you're not using all of the capabilities of your camera's sensor, get a cheapo throw away 1MP one!
Also wide angles on most digital cameras aren't wide enough to cause the "wide angle" effect quoted previously. Most are equal to 35mm or so on film cameras, hardly wide angles. Use tour camera at its widest setting to get the absolute best depth of field. Once you start zooming in, depth of field decreases dramatically.
Bob Boudreau
CANADA
Visit my model railroad photography website: http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/
Thanks a lot for all the great info. It really cleared a lot of things up for me. Sounds like I was looking to buy WAY more camera than I needed. I just found the manual to this 35mm film camera so hopefully that'll help too.
Thanks again!
These photographs were shot with my Canon Power Shot A540 ( $179.00 + a 1 gig card for $19.00) 6 mega pixels 4x optical zoom max f8. I do not use the flash or zoom for pics of the models.
You can use the macro for close-ups but you loose depth-of-field. (as in these two shots)
These next are at f8:
I'm still learning as I go.....these photos were taken without a tripod....I just sat the camera on the layout and held it steady to shoot. You can get alot better photographs if you use more lighting and read up on some basic photography.
tomkat-13, you seem to imply that you can't get f8.0 in Macro on your camera.....
I also use a Canon Powershot, and I always use f8.0 when shooting Macro.
In Macro, you lose depth of field, but it is not because of the aperture. It is because of the image magnification. If you can't get f8.0 in Marco, you must be doing something wrong.
I agree. Maybe Tomkat will share his technique for tree bark.
Nice job!
Jcopilot
msowsun wrote: tomkat-13, you seem to imply that you can't get f8.0 in Macro on your camera..... I also use a Canon Powershot, and I always use f8.0 when shooting Macro. In Macro, you lose depth of field, but it is not because of the aperture. It is because of the image magnification. If you can't get f8.0 in Marco, you must be doing something wrong.
Sorry I forgot to say that the two photos I shot in Macro, the camera was set at auto, as I hand held the camera to get an above shot. You are correct as being able to set the camera at f8 for macro. I'm still new at this. Here is the info on those photographs.
jcopilot wrote: I agree. Maybe Tomkat will share his technique for tree bark.Nice job! Jcopilot
The trees were made along time ago from some type of dried plant that grows on the side of my house. I used the dry plant, spray with cheap hair spray and cover with a dusting of ground foam.
Railphotog wrote: A lot of this material is covered in my website for digital model photography - check it out and see, it's in my signature.And to clear things up, a digital zoom just takes the center of an image and uses it to make things bigger. Bigger, but of lesser quality. You could do the same by taking an image and cropping out the center, diluting the number of pixels in an image. I recommed to never use the optical zoom feature, it is just a marketing tool.And using a 5MP digital camera at a lesser setting such as 1MP is just wasting your time. You'd have 80% fewer pixels to make up your images. Memory cards are dirt cheap these days, shoot only at the highest resolution in any camera. If you're not using all of the capabilities of your camera's sensor, get a cheapo throw away 1MP one!Also wide angles on most digital cameras aren't wide enough to cause the "wide angle" effect quoted previously. Most are equal to 35mm or so on film cameras, hardly wide angles. Use tour camera at its widest setting to get the absolute best depth of field. Once you start zooming in, depth of field decreases dramatically.
Bob,I find the digital zoom quite helpful in close up pictures.You may think its a selling gimmick that ok by me but,I would be lost without it because I find its easier to zoom for close up then crop a photo.
Of course I might be old fashion in my thinking its still ok to use all available "tools" on a camera.
I know it's often suggested here that you stop your lens all the way down to get the most DOF.
Most digicams don't go past f8. There's a very good reason for this. As you stop down a lens, an optical phenomenon known as diffraction becomes more apparent. Diffraction limits the theoretical resolution of the lens. An f1 lens has a theoretical resolution of 260 some odd line pairs per millimeter(lp/mm). An f8 lens has a theoretical resolution of only 94 lp/mm. In larger formats, this is no big deal, but in smaller formats, which are already resolution compromised anyway, this is a big deal. A friend of mine did some extensive calcultions with practical testing, and found that it's always better for maximum apparent depth of field to use the lens at f27 rather than f32. Of course, with larger formats, this becomes less significant. Considering the size of the sensors in most compact digitals, I really don't think we want them to stop down more than f8. Also, by virtue of their sensor size, compact generals generally employ short focal length lenses. Short focal length lenses result in very great apparent depth of field. I'm looking at my Canon A540 digicam at the moment, and on the wide end the lens has a focal length of 5.8mm. This aproximates the field of view of a 35mm lens on a 24x36mm camera. In all cases, even using the largest aperture of 2.6, it has a whole lot more apparent depth of field at the same aperture and magnifcation ratio of as a 35mm camera. I would guess it to have in the neighborhood of 4-5 more stops of apparent depth of field at the same aperture. As I love having shallow depth of field in many cases, this is one reason why I've kept using my film cameras. I couldn't replicate my system with a digital SLR and lenses of 2.8 and faster(many f2 and faster) from 24mm(soon to be 20mm) through 200mm for any less than 10 times my current investment. My lenses are all manual focus and completely incompatible with any existing digital camera, so I don't have a big investment to get to the point where I'm at now.
Tomkat,
Thanks for the quick reply on the tree. Nice photos, nice scenes, thanks again.
In case any of you are puzzled by the concepts of F-stops and f ratios, there is a simple way to figure out the f ratio of an apertured light gathering system, such as a pair of binoculars, a camera, or a telescope. The ratio = length of focus path from the front of the first light passing aperture/ the diameter of the aperture. Make sure you use the same scale of measurement for each, or you'll get a garbage figure. So, if a camera has a focal length (front element of the lens to the film surface or CCD pixel plane) of 50 mm, and the aperture is 10 mm (the iris is set for this diameter), then your f ratio is 50 divided by 10, or 5. Your camera is operating at f 5.
Light bending devices that gather light and focus it for our use have major problems as they have shorter and shorter f ratios. For one thing, errors on the surfaces of lenses and mirrors are magnified, and problems like chromatic and spherical aberrations (colour rings and distorted and out-of-focus places in the image) are more difficult and costly to control. Good lenses of these types will thin your wallet considerably. On the other hand, devices with f ratios higher than about 8.6 do much better, and as was stated earlier, telescopes, even the cheapest of refractors, will produce breath-taking images if the lenses are half decent and their f ratios (means a looonngg heavy optical tube) are greater than about f 14. At the longer f ratios, the image is rendered less messed up, over all, and that is why our amateur hobby photos can look so good if the lighting is good and we use a high f ratio.
There is one major drawback to high f ratios, though; you must get a higher intensity of light on the subject in order to get a decent image. The reason this is so is that, with magnifying devices, the longer focal length means a more magnified image, and that spreads out whatever light is coming off the object is spread out, or diluted, over a greater area. So, you will tend to want more light shed on your subject if you use a higher f ratio, ...or...or, use a tripod take a timed exposure. The image is already washed out by the long focal length, and your shaking hands will make it worse. You can get a brighter image by keeping the shutter open longer, but you sure as heck don't want any movement while the camera's shutter is open.
I hope this helps to sort it all out if you were wondering.....
"front element of the lens to the film surface or CCD pixel plane)"
This is not quite correct-you need to go from the nodal point of the optical system, which is more or less the optical center of a lens system. On most camera lenses, this is the place in the lens system where the aperture is physically located.
All of this also assumes that you're focused at infinity. Things sort of tend to break down as you focus closer than infinity. When the nodal point of the optics is one half the focal length past the infinity position(i.e. 75mm on a 50mm lens), you lose one stop of light. An f4 lens becomes an f5.6 lens. When the nodal point is twice the focal length from the film plane(i.e. 100mm on a 50mm lens), you lose two stops of light. This is because the image projected by the lens is being spread out over a greater area. If you remember back to slide projectors or overhead projectors, the image got dimmer as you moved the projector farther away from the screen. This is the same phenomenon.
Of course, todays cameras are automatic enough, and have been automatic enough for 30 years that you really don't need to worry about this stuff. I only know it because it interests me enough to bother to find out about it.
[quote user="BRAKIE]
Bob,I find the digital zoom quite helpful in close up pictures.You may think its a selling gimmick that ok by me but,I would be lost without it because I find its easier to zoom for close up then crop a photo.Of course I might be old fashion in my thinking its still ok to use all available "tools" on a camera.
Well you're just fooling yourself!
Take a photo at your camera's maximum optical zoom length. If your photo program has the capability, crop out a scene in the center of your image, then enlarge it. This is what digital zooms do. Yes you are seemingly getting closer, but the resulting image has way fewer pixels per inch than the optical image. You're just spreading them around, diluting the quality of the image.
If you're happy with an inferior image this can produce, then shoot away with your digital zoom and enjoy them. If you want quality images, stick to the optical zoom.