I am relatively new to digital photography. I am having problems with blurring images. I have a Canon power shot A350 5 mp. I have it set to "Auto" and when I try to shoot close ups of cockpit/detail, I get blurred images....



Any hints would be most appreciated.

Mike

Mike,does it have a macro setting?I'm using a very old A510 and get not bad results.Switch from auto to portrait,cancel your flash,and use macro if you have it.I also found out from having to re-take a lot of pics to rest your camera on something when you shoot or use a tripod.My pics may not be the best and I am not a photo head,but it works for me.Jeff T.

Thanks. Ill give it a try.

Yep if the lens isn't focussing in the photo I'd reckon you are too close, lens have a minimum distance at which they will focus.

DON'T USE MACRO lol. The macro function on a digital camera does not mean you get any closer. It is a bit of confusion from the old days when some lenes used to have a slide or lever that shifted the lens group to shorten the minimum focus range. You can of course get lenses that are optimised for close ups and they are called macro lenses, confusing the issue further!

On digital cameras the macro setting seeks to open the aperture up quite wide which shortens the depth of field. What happens with that is that the object in front is in good focus but the background is all blurry, the classic flower photo.

If you take a photo of a model with this setting you'll find only a very narrow portion of the mini is in focus.

What you need to do is put it into "landsacpe" mode which is the picture of the mountains on the camera mode. This will try to go off the ambient light and doesn't use flash. Also get heaps of light in you shot, that should close the aperture right down and give you a much better depth of field.

Let me know how you get on?

Any advice on lighting?

As Scott said above, lots of light... he's suggesting that the more light there is, the camera will try to compensate by shutting down the aperture, and this is good because it increases depth of field, which means more of your model will be in focus.

If you have a modelling light that has a nice white light, I would use that, and get it up pretty close to the subject, preferably shining from the same direction as you are taking the photo - so you might almost have the light with the camera on top of it. This way you will get fewer shadows.

An alternative is that big yellow light in the sky... preferably when it is not overhead. I have found you can get nice shots when the sun is fairly low, making sure again that the sun and the camera are coming from the same general direction, but obviously not with your shadow falling on the model.

What I would not use is either any yellowy coloured light, nor flash. I would also avoid either textured or brightly coloured backgrounds, so just some plain white paper is better than your carpet, or some darkish wood is OK in my opinion. Remember that the background reflects light in different ways.

Finally, if it is going to risk being out of focus, don't get too close - much better to have the original shot nicely in focus, and then enlarge + crop down the image on your computer.

Keep trying until you start to get something you like!

Interestingly, here is a review of your camera, take a look at the sample shots (link is right down at the end of the review) of the watch, and see if you can work out how they took that using the macro mode... that's a pretty decent shot, although I understand that this setting may not give good depth of field.