Macro and Close ups.

[short shifter]

I need some advice for taking close up pictures of glass beads. My Wife makes glass beads and needs to take nice sharp pictures so they can be posted on the net. We are using a Canon A85 and using the macro feature. We find that in some pictures the beads in the foreground are blurry while the beads in the background of the picture are crystal clear. Is there any other features we should be playing around with? Any shooting techniques? Any advice is appreciated,

Thanks in advance,

Jay

[Chunk]

Use aperture priority with the aperture set to the highest number available (smallest aperture). Use manual focus and focus at a point about 1/3 of the way into your scene. If this does not give adequate sharpness you are going to have to take the picture at a greater distance and crop it. Since you are using These for posting, this shouldn't be a problem.

[drg]

Chunk's Aperture advice is one the keys to getting the depth of field (sharp focus front to back in photo) you want. Also lots of light helps. Indirect light so that you don't get reflections and/or hot spots. One other technique you might wish to try, shoot so that all the items are in the same plane. In other words put them flat on a table and shoot from directly above. That way the items are the same distance from the camera and are in the same focus range (depth of field again).

Some Macro feature are not the best choice and limit the depth of field as opposed to just letting you focus closer. Post some small examples if you'd like for further suggestions.

Best of luck

-C

[mdcalaska]

Like drg said - the "macro" feature can cause undersirable effects. Most "macro" features imitate extension tubes/macro rings - which substantially reduce Deph-of-Field (sometimes to a couple mm!)

Chunk has the approach.

In addition to F-stop - Wider angle lensing (less zoom) also gives more DoF.

Find the best result, mark your set-up, and tell the wife she owes you big time (Product Photography services charge a lot because of the equipment/set-up challenges)!