This week's Photo Contest subject is "macro", or close-ups. This is fun, because it can be a photo of just about anything, but it's not as easy as it looks. The hard part is keeping the subject in sharp focus. Many digital cameras have trouble with extreme close-ups. Check your camera's instruction book for a "macro" or 'close-up' mode. That will allow you to get a lot closer. Decide on an interesting subject, make sure there is good lighting, (outdoors is best, don't use flash), and get in close. Start at about a foot between camera and subject, and take a few a little further away also. I found that my little A20 took the sharpest image at about 16". The most important thing here is a sharp image. If you get a blurry image, try it again. Subject can be almost anything, a coin, flower, sparkplug, piston ring, etc. Just try for good composition and get a sharp photo. Plan on cropping the image before you post it to make the subject more dramatic. Don't be afraid to try different ideas, and post more than one photo if you like. The skills you learn here will come in handy next winter when you want to post photos of your blown engine parts. :lol2:

As with last week, entries should be new photos taken this week, and post them in the digital camera photo gallery reserved for this week's contest. Winner will be chosen next monday June 7th and will receive a HCS sticker. Thanks to all submitting photos for these contests. Have fun!

post this week's contest entries here This Week's Contest

Rob Im glad you started this one. This is my weak point big time. My camera has like a 10cm macro so I am lookin to get another camera that will take much better close ups and detailed photos. Any recomendations? This one is great for point and shoot and its nice and small and does video with sound. So, do I want to look at one that has more zoom or a better lens or ????? thanks

none of them are great, I think it is the same for film 'point and shoot' style cameras too. To do really good macro you need a SLR-type cam with removable lenses. I'd say to check the reviews on DPreviews or one of the other sites and see what they are saying about it. But with that said, you can still do decent close ups with almost any cam if you work at it Usually better to back off and then crop severely afterward.

ok thanks

Rob this is a great idea and forces us to play with the cameras more... with the new one I am completely impressed with the macro abilities as I took a picture of my manual from maybe 4-5cm away and it came out great!!!

Thanks for putting the contest together!!!

We had a lot of entries to last week's photo contest, and many of them were very good, and that made judging especially difficult. Again this week we have multiple winners, and even then there are other entries that are very close. The main thing here is not so much who won, but how many good entries there were. Keep up the good work guys!

The winners are:

1st place: Loupin and another of mom's flowers from RONiN

Co-winners: bleeding hearts by snowman93, hostas by fixer5000, and purple flower by fcat503sp.

:beerchug: :fluffy: