Friday, October 8, 2010

Say Cheese and Macro-roni!

Between the blog and getting images together for my portfolio I have been doing a lot of camera work lately. There is an option on most digital cameras that are an incredibly useful tool to quilters and fiber artists, and I'm not sure how many of you are aware of it and how to use it! It's the Macro option!

How many times have you tried to take a good close up pictures of the quilting details of your pieces, only to get a blurry unfocused image? The macro option clears up those images and opens up a whoe new world to you!

You can clearly see the difference in these shots. The left side images are taken with the normal option selected, the right side images are the same objects but with the macro option selected on my camera.











 So how do we accomplish this? I made a short little video that should help you out!





Now, the cool thing is, that once you learn this you have another design tool literally at your fingertips!

There are two reasons that I use my macro, 1. Detail shots and 2. Inspirational shots to use in my pieces. Let's take a look at samples from the latter - can't you just imagine these in a quilt/fiber art piece?






8 comments:

  1. Love the macro feature on my camera!
    Teri

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  2. This is like one of those quizzes where they show you part of something and you figure out what it is. (At least with the first shot.) Is it swirled cinnamon in a coffee drink? Love your photos, especially the last one.
    Janet

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  3. The first shot is a cup of the plain Via instant coffee right after you pour it in, because it foams up just for a few minutes. :) And I LOVED that figure out what it is game!

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  4. Great instructional video! Thanks!!

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  5. Thanks for telling us about the Macro feature! Sure appreciate the time and effort you took to do the video... it really helps those of us who need a visual.

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  6. And how do you get your pics sid by side on blogspot??? I guess I'm not quite blog savvy yet. lol

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  7. To get the images side by side, I make sure that I make each image "small", and then mark it as aligned "center", then I drag the lower one up to beside the one above. Sometimes you have to nudge it over until they align close together. :) Hope this helps!

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