[tankist]

IMO photography is integral part of modeling anything, not only railroad. being able to show off your work is crucial, putting effort in that area pays off immediately. here is a nice guide created by a member on another forum:
http://sites.google.com/site/railphotog/

to quickly add - tripod and good lighting is highly recomended. also read the chapter on self timer use even though you not shooting autoportrait


post processing and organization of pictures.
for those who want to spend 0$ on software, i suggest to take a look at Picasa, another free goggle product. the editing is non destructive meaning you don't work on picture itself and can undo the changes but does add need to export ready pictures. has magic "i don't care just fix it somehow" button that while doesn't do miracles in many cases improves images quite a bit. google also offers linked service to host your pictures but personally i prefer fotki.com with its unlimited storage (i'm at 12Gb of pictures at the moment), very usefull as backup for when your harddrive is going to give up (matter of time).



i would like to stress that you don't have to have expensive camera to create good pictures. i often will use my years old ultra compact point in shooter and results are quite good IMO.

 

[Reckers]

Anton, thanks for opening this thread! I think my biggest problem is both lighting and attempting to over-magnify: it appears that when I use the closeup function, it gets fuzzy even though it looks good on the LCD. Will extra light help that?

 

[Reckers]

Oh! I'm using a 3.2 megapixel MVC-CD350. Takes excellent "regular" pics, but my closeups break wind!

 

[tjcruiser]

Are you zooming in on the automatic setting, or is there a separate close-up setting? Sometimes the latter is geared towards people-shots, sort of from waste up. You may find that the focal length there isn't ideal for closer shots of smaller stuff.

(But I admit that I'm an complete idiot when it comes to talking to cameras and photography ...)

TJ

 

[tankist]

Reck, couple things.


1. first thing you do to your camera is turn off that awefull date imprint and forget that this atrocious feature ever existed in your cam. if you ever need date and time to the fraction of the setting all this info (and bunch more, shooting settings, cam confi etc) is embedded into the file in form of EXIF. you can view it in picasa or file properties.
2. turn off digital zoom if you have it on, does nothing apart of ruining the picture.

if you want a closeup just put your camera closer, turn off the flash and provide good lighting just as in the article. don't zoom in unless you have VERY stable base and going for that special effect. use self timer feature to make things not as shaky.
use macro feature if you want to get even closer to the subject (thats how the picture in my first post was done). don't zoom if you do macro.

practice, practice, practice.
enhance them in Picasa (or other software of choice) lets see some more ,

 

[Komodo]

thx for the tips, i will use them sometime!