A penny saved

With the temperature outside in the negative numbers, this weekend has been a good one for me to stay indoors with a pot of chili on the stove and testing the capabilities of my new digital point and shoot.

I have to say, that the macro capability of this camera (Fujifilm Finepix S700) is both surprising and surprisingly hard. I have a set of close up filters for my Nikon SLR and wondered what would happen if I attached them to the S700. Boy do they get in close. What you see in this photo is about a 3/8 inch square area writ large. But that is after discovering that auto focus does not work at this distance. I was forced to set the camera to manual focus as close as it would set, then move the camera back and forth until the picture was sharp on the LCD screen. It's slow and tedious work, and requires a sturdy tripod and use of the self-timer to avoid camera movement during the exposure, which is quite long.

For those that dig technical data, this was done with a +7 stack of closeup filters, slight zoom setting on the lens, aperture exposure priority at f13.5 (for deepest depth of field). The penny was sidelit from a nearby window. It was taped to a wall with the tripod/camera set to shoot horizontally. It took several shots with some light blocking to get the reflections to my liking.

Photograph © 2008 James Jordan.