I should say that mine tend to focus on the "character" of the mushroom rather than on ID'ing them.
Most of those were done with a creaking old Olympus C2020z. I really like what I could do with that camera, but the image sizes were so small that they are really only good for online.
I used a Mamiya RZ-67 in the 1990s. That camera produced huge images. But it got too heavy for my bad feet to lug around with all its associated paraphenalia. I needed something in the middle so last year I bought an Olympus E510. I have only taken a few mushroom photos with it, but the season is upon us, so I should be getting a lot more of them soon. Olympus makes a flash for the E510 (and others) that operates wirelessly, and I've ordered one of those, too, as I am getting tired of the deer-in-the-headlights look of on-camera flash. The wireless feature should be helpful in brushy situations. I guess the new flash will require more learning. One nice thing about a simple camera like the C2020z is that there really aren't a lot of variables. No matter what equipment you use you will have to adapt to the constraints. That's half of the creativity of it. The fewer variables, the easier it is to adapt.
A hint, for mushroom photographers: light is everything. Use your flash and learn to modify it. You can fold a piece of paper so it is self-propping and put it near a mushroom in order to reflect some of the flash into unlit areas. Or you can deliberately shade certain areas from the flash. On compact cameras you can use the flash to draw the mushroom from the background by setting an under-exposure and using flash at the same time. On more controllable cameras you will have to figure out how to mix flash and background exposures so the mushroom is brighter than the background. In PhotoShop a little bit of unobtrusive vignetting can also be helpful in cases where you didn't put enough emphasis on the mushroom.
Another hint: wear your kneepads and expect to get dirty because the best photos are usually taken with your face in the dirt. Be a mushroom, be their peer and they will show themselves to you in a way that they rarely do to mere humans. :-)
--FatBear
Edited by FatBear (10/04/08 06:41 PM)
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InvisiblekoraksM
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Re: Mushroom Photography Tips [Re: FatBear]
#9029007 - 10/04/08 05:02 PM (4 years, 4 months ago)
All very sound pieces of advice :thumbup:
MF does have its charm, although portability is an issue. I still have a 645 lying around, gathering dust due to a focus calibration problem. Besides, I never really liked the 4:3 format. I like either 1:1 or 2:3 (or even wider). Currently, I use an EOS 20d for mushroom photography, but with grip and L-lenses attached it is quite a hassle to get really close to the ground. I do carry a Velbon tripod from which I can suspend the camera upside-down, which allows me to get really low, but I keep getting muck on my head from peering down the viewfinder. So I'd really like to get myself a nice little compact that I can poise on a GorillaPod. I think I'm going to look into Canon's PowerShot and IXUS product lines to see if there's something to my liking there.
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OfflineFatBear
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Re: Mushroom Photography Tips [Re: koraks]
#9029762 - 10/04/08 09:21 PM (4 years, 4 months ago)
I have a Bogen (now Manfrotto) tripod with the legs that swing out really wide and that weird 3D head. Using this with the center post upside down and the head twisted around as only this one can do, I can actually set the camera at ground level and it is still upright for easier control. But tripods are such a hassle for low-level photography that I really encourage people to learn to use the flash so you don't need them.
Olympus made the first dSLRs with "live view", allowing you to frame and focus your image on the LCD then shoot. In fact, this was one of the key reasons for my selecting this camera. It's kind of clumsy, doing a lot of clicking and buzzing and taking a long time to process a shot, but it works and is very handy for really awkward angles and/or muddy places. I'm not an equipment junky, so I don't know what's out there in 2008, but I assume the other camera manufacturers are also offering some form of live view by now. So whatever modern lens system a person has I imagine they can find a camera with live view to work with it.
Edited by FatBear (10/04/08 09:22 PM)
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InvisiblegeorgeM
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Re: Mushroom Photography Tips [Re: koraks]
#9029787 - 10/04/08 09:31 PM (4 years, 4 months ago)
Have you seen this?? I'm considering making it as my next camera, though I will really miss the movable LCD of other cameras in the Powershot series.
