[Wannabe]

and take the pic very close, focused on only really a couple of the candies.. which settings would I use? I know macro.. but anything else? I'm using a D80, with the 18-135mm lens.

Should I play with the aperture? I find when I do that sometimes it won't let me take the pic.. so i'm messing up somewhere.. obviously.

Thanks for any help!

[water]

Originally Posted by Wannabe

and take the pic very close, focused on only really a couple of the candies.. which settings would I use? I know macro.. but anything else? I'm using a D80, with the 18-135mm lens.

Should I play with the aperture? I find when I do that sometimes it won't let me take the pic.. so i'm messing up somewhere.. obviously.

Thanks for any help!

Hi Wannabe,
you must decide how much depth of field you want,then switch the camera to Aperture Priority and select the desired Aperture [forget the picture modes,you need to take control].
The camera will select the shutter speed to give an 'average' exposure.
Depending on the lighting you may have to dial in some +/- exposure compensation but by looking at the histogram after you take the shot you will see how things look and adjust shutter speed accordingly.
Needless to say a Tripod is pretty much a must.
Finally [from me] I personally find it better to focus manually when doing close-up shots.
Hope this is of some help and I am sure some of the others who 'specialise' in Macro/Close-up will bw along shortly

[Gary Bagshawe]

Small aperture F16-22 for lots of depth of field and large F2.8-5.6 for small dof.

[GainfulShrimp]

For closeups, especially when you might not be using a proper macro lens, I would recommend manual focus as water suggested. Then set the focus to the closest you can, and move the camera back and forth to focus. You should definitely use a tripod if you can.
Depending on how close the minimum focus distance is with your lens, you might still need to crop the picture a bit to get just two candies filling the frame, but by using MF at the minimum distance, you're getting as close as you possibly can before resorting to a crop.

If your camera won't let you take the picture at certain apertures, it might be because it's trying to protect you from choosing a very long shutter speed (which you wouldn't be able to hand-hold the camera for without getting blur from shake). If you use a tripod you can minimise this problem - so long as you can find a mode and setting where the camera will allow you to take the pic!

Experiment with various apertures to see the effect on depth of field. Because the effect of aperture on DoF varies according to how far you are from the subject, you might find that you're surprised how shallow the DoF field is and you need to use a higher f-number to keep everything in focus. The name of the game here is experimentation, at least until you get a feel for suitable apertures for the shot you're trying to achieve.

To further reduce camera shake on a tripod, you might want to use 'mirror lock up' from the custom functions, together with either a remote release or the self-timer.