A friend had given me his camera and laptop and wanted me to set it up so that he could take photographs remotely. He is writing a book about making jewellery and the photos he wants to take to be included are all very detailed. He finds it very difficult being sure of the focus using the viewfinder of the camera so wanted the software installed that would allow the image to be seen on the larger screen before it was taken.
Try as I could I had no success whatsoever on his rather dated IBM ThinkPad (it has a 25G hard-drive!) I couldn't even locate the software on the Installation disk for the Canon SLR.
In desperation I put the disk into my own laptop and was very surprised to see many more programs available to be installed than were showing on the ThinkPad.
I installed the EOS Utility only and without much idea of whether it would work or not, set up the Canon 40D on a tripod and dug out a light-box that was once used for viewing slides before putting them into a cassette to be projected, and a table lamp.
The idea was to put a small object on the light box (just a small fluorescent light under cloudy, opaque glass) and illuminate the small crystal and so get the crystal without a shadow beneath it.
I started up the Camera and linked with the USB cable to the computer and started the program. To begin with the limited rectangle of information on the right of this picture was all that appeared but after clicking on a few buttons I found the one that I needed.
The tiny piece of opal could be positioned on the light box and the left and right arrows you can see to the right of the image control the focusing.
The small rectangle in the centre of the image was not clear to me straight away. But when I clicked on the magnify button I soon learned what it was all about! Fantastic!
That rectangle was brought up to the size of the monitor and precise focus could then be achieved. Once the focus was right on that bit the zoom box could be closed and the entire object was visible with that new focusing.
Taking the photo meant clicking on the button in that control box on the extreme right. I had discovered how to set the preferences to save a photo on the memory card in the camera as well as in a folder on the hard drive. So now I am in love!
I shall be playing with my friend's macro lens and exploring the small things around the place! The light box works a treat for taking pictures without shadows.
Here is a tiny little crystal in which there are little black dots - when I enlarged this picture I found out that the little black dots are tiny little black crystals with definite crystalline shapes.
That is how good this macro lens is! And how good this method of focusing on something small, is.
AJ
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