[Doug]

You want a nice camera with a nice macro and a good lens that lets in lots of light. After your camera, lighting is the next most important aspect of good photography.

For lights, try and find 'Daylight' bulbs. Grow lamps for indoor plant cultivation should work.

I take all my photos on a tripod, with the self timer so that I can get out of the way and not shake the camera - as most of the shots I take are a few seconds long in exposure time. This is also because I use Manual mode and have a high f-stop (about f22 or f27) to maximise the depth of field.

If you use tungsten or fluorescent lighting, you will need to correct the colour balances on the photo. I do this on virtually every shot as I have a mixture of both lighting types. A good photo editing software package is thus also required. If you don't have one, they I would recommend Google Picasa. It is an essential tool for managing large numbers of digital photos on your computer and it has some nifty photo editing tools built in too.

 

[Doug]

Please keep images down to a reasonable size.

In the guidelines we ask for images around 700 pixels wide

http://www.modelrailforum.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=25

This is because not everyone has a large screen and broadband connection. We have to think of the majority.

If you use a photo manager like Picasa, you can export 700 pixel wide photos to Photobucket or whatever service you are using (perhaps even the free Google Web Albums). It will be faster and easier to manage on the forums.