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Good Cameras for Mushroom Close-ups


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Hi all,

There's been a lot of beautiful pictures of mushrooms floating around here lately. All I've got camera-wise is an old smartphone that I don't plan on upgrading any time soon. I'm eager to hear any recommendations on cameras you've found handle close-up pictures well? I'm getting more into learning about mushrooms, and I think good, close up photos from the field would be very helpful.

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Well...
I do not know how to say it in English ..
Therefore, do not be offended if it is wrong with the Russian language ...

--------------------------
In short, a joke is this:

Old Dave W now travels in America, photographs mushrooms ...
We, Russians and Americans, then together we will watch and eat them

:D

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You might check out the Nikon Coolpix s9900.  My mushroom picking partner uses one, and is very happy with it.  I currently just use my phone, but am looking into getting one of these myself. 

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I had a canon digital that took great pics, but have just been using my phone lately. I have a canon sureshot (I think) in my near future. It is not a DSLR but has a 50x digital zoom and larger aperature for low light pics. 

 

Here's one from the camera 

IMG_1808.jpg

and from an iphone7 , you can see the better quality from the digital camera

ECBF752D-E485-4F7F-8EE1-23970ED3678E.jpg

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Nothing will come of you ...
Do you know what the reason is?

------------------------
See:

I got married a second time in 2001 ..

My father-in-law, the Cook, asked me:
- How do you make borsch?
I can cook and told him:
- I'll take beets, onions, carrots, tomatoes and will roast on pork fat ...
-------------------------------
After that, the Cook stopped me and said:
- You do not know how to cook borscht ...
You must first take the SOUL, and then "fry carrots and onions"

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I use a Canon Powershot ELPH 160. It's your basic $100 digital camera. I use the M1 setting for resolution. On the camera display it says this res level is 10M, but the photos record at about 3 megapixels +-0.3 megapixels. I set it on AUTO and snap a lot of photos, especially if the subject (mushroom) is unusual or a particularly good example of a type. IMO, lighting is the most important thing. Almost all my mushroom photos are taken outdoors, in natural light. The trick is to get good ambient lighting without too much glare or too much shadow. Sometimes, finding a spot where there's a bit of shade near an open brightly lit area is all it takes to get decent photos. Position the subject so that direct sunlight and any reflections of sunlight are avoided. My camera seems to take the best mushroom photos when it's held maybe 8"-10" away from the subject. If the backdrop behind the subject includes a lot of depth of field (distance), then the camera may fail to focus on the mushroom, which occupies a relatively small area of the frame. Placing the mushroom onto the ground, atop a log, stump, or rock, or just on my hand helps the camera focus at the desired distance. In-situ shots are trickier. Sometimes I will move a mushroom into a spot with better lighting/backdrop and create a faux in-situ (by imitating the natural conditions). I carry a white translucent photography umbrella inside my knapsack (also comes in handy when I'm surprised by rainfall :-) I also carry a light reflector which consists of aluminum foil glued onto a piece of cardboard. Generally, I don't put a lot of effort into photographing a typical mushroom of a fairly common type. But, if I find something particularly interesting --or if I'm making a collection that's likely to be included in a study-- I may take 10-15 minutes adjusting lighting and positioning. On a 2-3 hour foray I'll typically accumulate 300-400 photos (if there's plenty of mushrooms to find). At home, I load all the photos onto my laptop, sort through them, and label the ones I decide to keep. About 70%-80% of the photos I take on a given foray end up in the trash. I like to cover a lot of ground and get photos of lots of different things I see. So my emphasis is more on quantity than quality... except for when something really captures my interest. 

Something I should have --keep forgetting to get one-- is a small stabilizing beanbag... used to keep the hand-held camera steady. I do not use a tripod. 

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Thanks everyone. Dave, I' really surprised (but happy) to hear that you're using such a cheap camera - after seeing your photos, I was figuring you must have been using something pricey. I guess like most things it comes down much more to skill than equipment.

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It's also a function of quantity. What people see here represents the top 10% of the top 15% of the photos I snap in the field. I once snapped thirty-something photos of a single morel. Most of these were discarded. But, a handful of nice shots are stored in my files. This one is an honest in-situ. Also, this small "yellow morel" was found April 6 2012, an extremely early date for this type mushroom.    58c33a8729a76_Morelsh4-6A5.thumb.jpg.b0de894315f8ac56996984c9c3750e37.jpg

 

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Great discussion here . I find getting good close ups a bit of a challenge when you are trying to keep the file size small enough to post online . I use a Fuji Finepix s1000 . along with hunting mushrooms, I am an avid gold prospector, and when getting the fine details of nuggets, I always use the macro mode . Lighting as Dave mentioned is also very important . Someday I will graduate to a good dslr, but for now I will do the best with what I have .Below is a shot of a nugget I found here in Va. . This was the best I took out of 10-12 shots . Perhaps my resolution is set too low ?

 

DSCF2417.JPG

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Adawg, when I click on the nugget photo to initiate zoom mode, the photo does not enlarge. I think this indicates the file is very small. Maybe a year or so ago, only small-file photos would post at this website. This issue has since been resolved. The photos I have been posting are all ~3.0 MB.

An old-timer who lives on my road told me he used to pan for gold in some streams only about 20 miles from where I live. But that nugget is the first evidence I've seen of anyone finding gold here in eastern NA. 

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If you are thinking about moving up to a dslr like camera, I'd suggest that you look at a mirrorless interchangeable lens camera. These cameras have been around for a while now and can be found used for fairly reasonable prices. Most have adapters available that let you use lenses from other companies. This allows you the flexibility to purchase older macro lenses to save some money or to get exactly what you need in a lens. The advantages of the mirrorless cameras are that what you see on the cameras LCD screen  is what the photo will appear like. Any adjustments are seen and you can also zoom in to see exactly what's in focus. They also have the ability show over exposure data as a screen overlay so that you can make adjustments to correct this. One other advantage is that mirrorless cameras are for the most part much smaller than traditional dslr cameras.

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I was looking into the mirrorless 4/3 cameras a few years ago and almost bought a Sony. The idea of having dslr quality with a camera that wasn't much bigger than my digital with the right lens seemed like a good deal. Regardless to say at the time it was a big investment and wasted my money else where. I ran into a girl that had a Nikon camera with the 42x digital zoom and she showed me some pics of a humming bird and they were great. So I decided this would be the way to go and if I get to it this year I am going with the canon powershot with the 50x zoom, 18mp, 1080px, and wifi. Seems like a good deal for my purposes. It's not compact, but I guess we can't have it all.

 

I agree with Dave on taking many pictures. My rough estimate is 100 pics for a good one and 1000 for a great photo. I spent a day with a professional photographer photographing English Setters and learned a bit from her. By the way she took a thousand pictures give or take a few and never got a money shot. I learned a lot about lighting and layers that day. 

I think mushroom pictures are for the most part easy, it's just tough to find the time to invest in taking that many pictures. I might snap two or three of each one and am lucky to find a keeper or two from all of them at the end of the day. 

A couple of tricks i use are pretty easy. I always try to be level with the mushroom unless trying to get gill shots. This puts me on the ground for terrestrials where I can rest my hand on the ground and stabilize the camera. If it's not a cloudy day I try to put the sun at my back and cast my own shadow over the mushroom. 

Next to mushrooms I have spent many days trying to get shots of flying birds my dogs have pointed . This is challenging and I have got a few woodcock pictures but my camera was not fast enough for them not to be blurred. 

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Best close-up photos were taken by my old Pentax Optio 750Z. It was so-so for normal photos, but for macro - exceptional. 

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On 3/11/2017 at 7:45 AM, Dave W said:

Adawg, when I click on the nugget photo to initiate zoom mode, the photo does not enlarge. I think this indicates the file is very small. Maybe a year or so ago, only small-file photos would post at this website. This issue has since been resolved. The photos I have been posting are all ~3.0 MB.

An old-timer who lives on my road told me he used to pan for gold in some streams only about 20 miles from where I live. But that nugget is the first evidence I've seen of anyone finding gold here in eastern NA. 

Dave , I will try resetting the file size as you suggest . 

My father was a rather famous photographer back in the 50's and 60's , and I inherited an old Hasselblad Blue 501 , which some have told me is one of the finest cameras ever made . But not digital, and way beyond my knowledge of how to use it .And I'm sure technology has improved to the point to make it obsolete . It will stay in the family as a memory of the 'ol man' ..

Also Dave, there is a small community of recreational gold prospectors here in Va . We have a forum as well .. Don't want to hijack this thread, but here is a link ..

http://au-prospecting.com/gold1/portal.php

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Adawg, the Hasselblad 501 cameras are still used professionally today. Many in use today are fitted with a digital back and produce wonderful images with lots of detail. Many would consider these images superior to many of today's high end dslr cameras. It's not a portable system, but would be rewarding to use to take photos of family and composed photos of mushrooms that you've brought back from the fields or woods. If I was the owner of such a camera, I would put it to use shooting film and having that developed and scanned. Also, I would like to know who your father was and wonder if I might find examples of his work online.

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I use my iPhone these days instead of lugging my big Cannon into the woods. The cannon takes great pictures, but gets pretty cumbersome if I'm out for a long time. These are a couple shots with my phone. I agree with Dave about taking a lot of pictures to get a few good ones. In the days of film and manual cameras this was you would do what's called bracketing with different exposures to get the best shot possible. But you had to wait for the film to be processed before you know if it worked.

image.jpeg

image.jpeg

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Evan, I have also contemplated using an iPhone to photograph mushrooms. I often see many excellent photos like the ones you've posted above, but the quality of the photos seem to not stand up to much cropping or low light photography. In the photo of the newt above, there are areas of what appear to be digital noise which causes photos to lack sharpness. This is more noticeable in the out of focus areas. The second photo has areas that are slightly overexposed, this also could lead to loss of detail that might be helpful in mushroom I.D. The problems I've pointed out can probably be overcome when using a smart phone, and they also occur when using a digital camera, but are easier to correct in my opinion. The benefits of a smart phone are their portability, really nice jpeg color reproduction, and multifunctionality. I am not criticizing your photos here, just pointing out the differences between taking photos with a phone vs. a digital camera. I read a comment the other day that stated that smartphones should honestly be called smartcameras.

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Thanks again guys for all your input. I've kinda set my mind on this one: https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1110382-REG/canon_9779b001_powershot_sx530_hs_digital.html

I like the powerful zoom. There have been lots of times in the woods I would have liked to been able to take a photo of a bird or chipmunk or whatever, and this camera looks good for that too.

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As others have said, smart phones are pretty good for this. I had a Nexus 5 which I could take ultra close up photos of bugs with. I could get about an inch away and then zoom in. Now I Have a OnePlus 2 which has about as good of a focus distance. The The Nexus 5 probably isn't the highest pixel ratio anymore. The OnePlus 2 shoots in higher resolution than my old Nikon DSLR (around 3000x4000 px) and I don't have it set to the highest resolution at the moment. Its still ends up being around 5°F in northern Minnesota right now. So no bugs to take photos of yet.

Note: The field of view (object in focus & everything else out of focus) is natural. I didn't use an app or filter for this.

Here are some examples:

 

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  • 1 month later...

Thanks to a lot of your suggestions, I did get the Canon sx530. Here are some photos I've taken. Still learning, but I've been happy so far! Not too many mushroom pictures, but still some decent close ups. Thanks, everyone. IMG_0256.thumb.JPG.76ccaf967fccc16344aaa1d33facc1ac.JPG

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IMG_0274.JPG

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