Happy Macro Birthday!!!

I am one of those lucky folks who has my birthday a few days after Christmas, so family has it easy--they lovingly give me a gift and say "Here's your single present....".



This year my brother and sister in law gave me a bodacious "combined present"--a really nifty PHD (push here dummy) point and shoot Nikon. Turns out this camera has almost unbelievable specs for macro photography, which means it can be used for--wait for it--the MODEL CAR BLOG!!!



I tore open the present and got to work, and in about 10 minutes got the picture above. Compared to my auto-nothing macro setup I have now, this is bliss--a shot that might have taken 15-20 minutes to set up now takes about 30 seconds. Dealing with the lighting is still a bit tricky, but it took me 2 minutes to figure out for tight macros to work I have to defeat the built in flash and use some form of external lighting--for this, it's just a natural light fluorescent a few inches away.



I had an old steering wheel from something or other on my workbench, so here it is. This has very little "photoshoping". With more setup work, I probably could have gotten this to look much better.....



Here's the emblem off the 442 Olds Grille. In reality it measures 4mm x 1mm. Not bad for a PHD camera!



And the problem now is (of course) you can see TOO MUCH....notice the bad overlap of Bare Metal Foil. With a non-macro shot, you probably wouldn't notice this. But I notice this. So much for a "clean build"....




Man this is going to be fun! This headlight bezel measures 8x4mm. It is incredible how far PhD cameras have come. And nothing against my in laws, but I have a feeling this camera didn't break the bank either!