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Picture of Jerry Treiman
posted
I'll get the ball rolling on this camera series. I have the model 885 and have been pretty happy with it. The price has come down quite a bit for this 3.2 megapixel camera with 3x optical zoom and good macro capability. I offer here one tip and one question.

I read the reviews before I bought it and noted the comments about too much pink in the pictures. When I first used the camera the exaggerated reds under artificial light were annoying, but I found that by using the "Preset White Balance" feature and a white card as a sample I can get good color balance, regardless of the type of light I am using. The instructions were pretty clear on how to do this. Photoshop also helps a little with color balance, after the pictures are taken.

I still need to play around with aperture selection to try to get better depth of field, as Larry suggested in another thread. Have others gotten good depth of field with this model?
 
Posts: 1455 | Location: Los Angeles, California USA | Registered: January 14, 2003
Picture of Jerry Treiman
posted
I did some playing around today with depth-of-field. I find that the 885 is somewhat limited in aperture selection, but I am still able to get pretty good shots in the CSM (custom) mode set for close-ups. If you wish you can manually set the aperture to a larger f-stop, but the camera compensates for this forced aperture setting in some way with a resulting loss of resolution. I got my best results with exposure mode P rather than the manual (M) setting. I use a high resolution image (large file size) to preserve the most detail, and then resize the image in my photo editing software. Color is initially adjusted by pre-setting the white-balance to a white card, with minor contrast and brightness adjustment of the final image. I zone focus on the center of the area of interest. For this test I shot obliquely to really stress the depth-of-field issues. The following composite contains parts of three different images. The best, on the left, was shot from about 8" and zooming in to frame the watch a little tighter. In close-up mode you CAN use the zoom to a limited extent. The middle shot was from the same distance, but no zoom (I cropped the image more) and the loss of resolution is slightly noticeable. Both of these shots had pretty good depth-of-field across the entire watch. The right-side image was from a closer distance (~3 inches) and depth-of-field is beginning to be compromised. Another shot (not included) at the closest range (<2 inches) had more noticeable focus issues at the top and bottom of the image. I will post the best image of the full movement in the photo gallery.

 
Posts: 1455 | Location: Los Angeles, California USA | Registered: January 14, 2003
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