Indoor close ups - one for ebay fans

As well as using your camera for typical subjects, such as birthday parties, family snaps, landscape and holiday photographs, it can also be used to make a record of items you own or even copy old photos.
Words and pictures Peter Bargh

You may want to make a visual family tree, copying all the old photos who's negatives were lost decades ago, or you may want to make a photographic record of all your jewellery. There's also the increase in popularity of auction sites such as ebay where a photo accompany the item you want to sell will improve your chances of selling it. This type of photography falls into the category of still life and is the perfect option for these cold winter days. All you need is a suitable flat area to lay your item to be copied and a little knowledge of focusing, exposure and lighting.

First off lets look at the camera you could use. Providing your camera has a close focus facility you can use any, including 35mm and APS compacts, 35mm SLRs, medium-format or digital models.

Old photographs can be copied with ease using window light. Place the picture on a flat surface near a window. Position the camera above and parallel to the photo and move up or down so that the frame is filled with the photo. Avoid direct flash and ideally have the light coming across from an angle to prevent reflections, which will be more noticeable on glossy photos. The problem of parallax is shown in the shot on the left.

The main disadvantage with using a compact camera is that the viewfinder will not show you what the lens is seeing because of a thing called parallax error. The viewfinder is usually positioned above and to the left of the lens, which is fine for distant shots but the closer you get the less accurate this becomes.

All but the most basic compact camera has markings in the viewfinder to correct for parallax error. At close range you would ignore the whole frame and use inner marks that would force you to tilt the camera up and to the left, ensuring the picture comes out central, but this approach can be a bit hit & miss.

For this reason it's better to use a 35mm SLR, or a digital camera that has an LCD display for the viewfinder. In both cases the viewfinder will show more or less what the lens sees and you will get a more accurate framing of the subject.
Camera's such as the classic Nikon F3 and Canon F1 give 100% accuracy so whatever is in the viewfinder appears on film, most others are around 80-90% accurate so you usually end up with a little extra space around the picture, but this is often cropped by the lab, so there's no need to worry.

The camera should be set on the macro mode when using a compact or digital model, and on the SLR you would adjust the focusing ring on manual or let the camera look after itself on an AF model. If you need to get closer you could screw a close up lens into the filter thread. Focus on the point you want sharp and where possible select a small aperture to ensure maximum depth-of-field.

Direct winter sunlight from a window will be harsh and at a low angle casting strong shadows. Use a piece of paper, placed at the camera side of the photo, to soften these and reduce contrast.

Now to lighting. As you are going to be working indoors you either need to be close to a window or use artificial light or a flashgun. Window lighting provides the easiest option, but there are a few things you need to look at to ensure the results are good. First remember that the light is coming from one side, so, depending on the size of the subject, the side furthest from the window is going to go progressively darker. If the subject has depth, the side facing the window will be in light and the side facing away will be in shadow. If you position a reflector at the dark side it will reflect light back into the subject and will 'fill-in' the shadows. Purpose made reflectors are available, but you could use a piece of cooking foil mounted on card or white card as a low cost alternative. Move the reflector around while looking through the viewfinder until the shadow area lights up before taking the picture.

Jewellery can be tricky to photograph because of all the reflective surfaces (image on the left) but by using reflectors you can create a soft surrounding light to improve things (image on the right).

If window light is not an option you can use your room lights, but beware, they will produce a photograph with a colour cast when using a film camera. This is because film is made to produce correct colours in daylight or when using flash, which is corrected for daylight. When you shoot in fluorescent light the pictures will have a horrible green colour and when you shoot using household light bulbs the pictures will have a strong yellow cast. With some SLR cameras you can correct this by screwing a filter onto the lens ­ blue for tungsten or magenta for fluorescent. Some photographers use special tungsten film, which would look blue if shot in daylight but corrects the yellow from the house lighting.

Owners of most digital cameras have nothing to worry about here. You just let the camera work out the colour using its auto white balance control and if the picture still has a colour cast you could switch to manual and set either tungsten or fluorescent balance.

The other option, and probably the trickiest, is using flash. Tricky, especially if the only flash you have is the one built into the camera. Flash of this kind will hit the subject and bounce straight back making the subject have a distracting bright highlight in the middle of the photo. SLR users can buy a separate flash gun and fire it from an angle to avoid the reflections or you could buy a slave flash gun and use the built in flash to fire the slave, mounted at an angle. This opens up a whole new article though so here we'll just cover making the most of the built in unit.

Photographing items for auction sites. Keep the pictures small. If you're using a Coolpix set it on the 640x480 mode and reduce it again to about 300 pixels using your computer software. This example of an old oil can shows the difference using bright daylight which produces harsh shadow on background (top); Flash which produces harsh highlights on the can with a lack of texture (middle) and subdued daylight to pick out textures and ageing of the can (bottom).

There are a couple of ways to improve your chances of getting a good photo using the built in flash. The first, using a head on approach, is to diffuse the flash by placing some tissue over the tube. This will also reduce the power though, so you need to experiment with distance and exposure. If your camera has exposure compensation try that at different settings too and make a few notes that you can refer back to when the pictures are processed.

The other option, and one that's more likely to produce good results, is to photograph the subject from a slight angle. You won't get a squared up photo so it's not ideal for copying photographs, but is fine for many subjects as the flash reflection will go off in another direction.

When photographing shiny metal objects you really need to take care with reflections here I made a simple but effective paper cone tent to diffuse the ambient light while photographing some cutlery. Tape some pieces of A 4 paper together and make it narrow at the top with just enough space for the lens to poke through and the bottom should be wider than the subject area.