Hi Ted,
Wow! Very nice pictures! And a similar set-up to the G5 I had till a few months ago
.
I used the aftermarket adapter as well, with a B&W close-up lens, 3 diopters, allowing me a view area of a little over a centimetre wide, and close-up distance of a few centimetres.
Of course, you have to do everything manually, and at such nearby distances, that can get rough. However, all is not lost (hey, I am starting with tips already
).
First of all: shutter speed. That tends to get long if you want any depth of field (DOF), and that again makes for unsharp images. If you have a remote control for the camera, it is advisable to use that, or alternatively, the timer release. Just set it to 2 seconds or so, if you can.
A tripod comes in handy as well, but do yourself a favour, and get one with legs that don't bend. The ones with bendy legs are too wobbly. and get a tripod that relates in size to your cam. It doesn't have to be expensive, but it has to have legs that extend beyond the camrea body to get any stability whatsoever. Also, make sure you attach the camera in such a way, that the lens is aligned with the foremost leg, for added stability.
If you have a camera with a hot shoe, that is great, because it means you can use an external flash in stead of the built-in flash. Best thing to do, is to get an extension cord and connection, to allow the flash to be used off-camera, for better lighting of close by objects.
If you don't have a hot shoe, but just a built-in flash, you can get an extra flash unit with built-in slave unit. That flashes when another flash goes off. These are fairly inexpensive ($25-$30) and more than good enough for the purpose. Postion it about a neter away from the object, at an appropriate angle, cover the flash of the camera and the slave flash with a piece of white paper (I use sticky tape to hold it there), and off you go. Of course, you could get a few more of these flashes, and position them around the subject.
BTW, these flashes come in handy at family parties as well: just hold one in your hand while taking pics with your other.
Then there are light bulbs of course, but you'll find you have to start building things in order to get decent lighting around a small subject, and ideally you would want to use daylight bulbs (those blue ones), as daylight correction for neon lights or normal bulbs just doesn't work too well in practice, neither in camera or in a photoshop type package. You will always get the best results by aiming for the best results in-camera in the first place, anyway.
A light tent you could build yourself: examples are given here in this forum anyway. Or you could use a lamp shade. When you use a ligth tent, you don't need to soften the light on your flash anymore with pieces of paper and tape, as long as the flash is not within the light tent of course.
Oh, always focus by hand if you can. I found that that is the only way to get focus there where you want it, when photographing small objects. Even expensive cameras get confused. Either there is not enough contrast or too little light for the camera to focus properly, or it just wants to focus on the wrong part of the image, because of your composition.
Anyway, HTH, warm regards, Wim
