Monday, November 21, 2005

Macro Photography Inspirations, Tips and Tricks

You won’t have to look hr to find close-up ideas – even everyday household objets can make fantastic subjects Once You’ve trained your eye to look for macro photo opportunities, you’ll find them almost anywhere, even in objects such as stamps, coins, paper clips, drawing pins and so on. The fact that you’re capturing them from an unusual viewpoint makes shot of ‘found’ objects interesting in themselves.

Macro tips

If your camera focuses poorly at close range, use the telephoto setting to increase magnification. However, remember that this will further reduce depth of field.

Attach a close up lens that screws onto the camera’s filter thread (assuming your camera has one). Available in +1, +2, +3, +4 and +10 magnification, many camera can be adapted with push on systems that enable a close up lens to be fitted

Use a small or white silver reflector to fill in shadow caused by overhead lighting or the camera itself.

Read the full macro photography article by Paul Smith.

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Kodak Easyshare CX7430 Digital Camera Review

The Kodak EasyShare CX7430 is an excellent point-and-shoot digital camera that is currently selling very well. Just consider its features: 4 megapixel resolution, 3x optical zoom, 16MB of memory, as well as a movie mode. Given it’s low price (around $190), it’s an amazing deal. This camera is most suitable for beginners – it has all of the basic functions you need in a simple digital camera. Let’s have a look at its various features:

Design and Construction
Like all point-and-shoot digital cameras, the Kodak EasyShare CX7430 is designed to be compact enough to fit in your pocket. It’s silvery finish will certainly attract lots of attention too. Its dimensions are 4.0 inches by 2.6 inches by 1.25 inches (weight-height-depth), and it weighs only 6.3 ounces. There is a little 1.6 inch LCD screen behind the camera for viewing images. Initially, I found the LCD screen a tad on the small side, but I got used to it after snapping a couple of photos.

Optics and Resolution
The Kodak EasyShare CX7430 is equipped with a Kodak Retinar lens and offers with a 4 megapixel resolution. There’s also a 3x optical zoom for taking subjects faraway. What is interesting about this camera is its wide range of scene modes. Most point-and-shoot cameras have a handful (maybe 5) scene modes for photography under different conditions: macro, landscape, night photography, etc. The Kodak EasyShare CX7430 has 9 scene modes to choose from, which is much more than the competition.

Read the full Kodak camera review by Gary Hendricks.