Hi there, a cam with good macro capabilities for shooting model figures is hard to find. Here are some things to consider:
1) DOF, DOF and DOF again. Photographing figures is like portraiture and control of depht of field is verry important. Unfortunately compact digicams suffer from uncontrolable endless DOF (due to their small CCD-chips). Both the foreground, the figure and the background will be in focus (if you focus corretly). You can create a nice DOF (where the subject is sharp against an unsharp background) with three parameters. (a) a cam with a larger medium (being chipsize of filmformat), (b) a larger aperture or © a longer focal length. When shooting digital the lineup with DOF-control is like this: (1) full frame DSLR like EOS 1Ds(II) or EOS 5D, (2) all other DSLR with 1.6 / 1.5 factors like the Canon EOS 350D or Nikon D50 (3) compacts
2) Macro lenses can get a bit expensive but if you use an SLR (film or digital) one can always trust a relative cheap extension tube (a lensless tube you put between lens and body) to get the enlargement you are looking for.
3) Light, remember that if you can focus at 2cm (if measured correctly that means 2 cm from the film/chip and not 2 cm from the frontlens) you are blocking most of the light. So in the real world you can focus on a distance where you actually can't take a photograph.
Beside these more theoretic points I would like to give some practical pointers:
4) In this digital age one can get verry good occasion (semi)-proffesional film camera's (I recently bought an USD 800 EOS 3 for USD 200 in mint condition). Since autofocus is of no use anyway with macro any film camera with changeable lenses will do. Get a macro lens or a good zoom (like 28-70 f/3.5-4.0 or the likes) + extension tube and you are in business (one could do this for approx USD 120)
5) If you do want a digital cam and don't want to pay $$$ for an DSLR try a digicam with teleconverter (wich goes on the lens). This will give you extra optical magnification (optical quality will suffer from this, mostly in the corners and on the edges. Now that you know this you will not put the head of the figure against the top edge of the photo, would you?). When the cam has enough pixels one can do some digital magnification when needed. I never tried it but I think upressing in photoshop will not do any good on the fine detail of the figure.
6) Avoid staight on flash light, if you cannot avoid it try to reflect light with a white piece of board to lighten up dark area's.
allright, that should do it for one post.
Happy modelling, Michiel
