I was trying to photograph some of my chainmaille bracelets tonight to get them listed at 1000 Markets and Artfire. Photography isn’t my favorite part of the process, but tonight was particularly aggravating.
One problem I’ve had in the past is getting a clearly focused picture because I run into depth of field issues. In automatic mode, my camera shoots at a low aperture, typically around F5.6, which means I don’t have a lot of DOF. If I up the aperture, the camera thinks there isn’t enough light. So I’d gotten a daylight fluorescent bulb for one of the regular lamps in the studio, and I added that to the two photo fluorescents I have in there. When I turned all three on, it certainly SEEMED bright enough in there, even with the photo tent filtering the light.
I decided to try to figure out Av mode (aperture priority) on my camera. Well, the user manual doesn’t exactly explain it clearly, but I finally managed. So I set the aperture to F16, but then couldn’t get it to accept a slow enough shutter speed. I generally use the two second timer on the camera, and have it on a tripod, so I should in theory be able to use a long exposure. But the camera just wasn’t happy.
I finally got some pictures taken, just to trial-and-error. When I downloaded them, I found that the ones on the black background seem a little over-exposed, if anything, and the ones on the beige tile background are a little dark. I’ll have to see how well that can be corrected in GIMP.
Some of the pictures seemed to focus through the full depth of field, but most didn’t — either the front part or the back part were still blurry. I really wish I had a “Photographing Glass and Metal for Dummies” guide so that the camera could do its job the way I want!