What's a good, uploadable camera for taking highly detailed photos of small, fine scale models?

Question

I'm thinking of selling some of my HO train models on eBay but don't yet have a digital camera for photographs nor much knowledge of them. The camera must be able to take either close-up shots of finely detailed parts or sharp photos of the overall model. Traditionally, model railroaders have used film cameras shooting through pinhole lenses with special lighting and long exposures to get the desired quality with depth of field. An added but unnecessary plus is the ability to get the camera into tight places. 

Without doubt, the gold standard in digital model displays is John Gurdak at Uncle Dave's Brass Trains, though the people at Dan's Train Depot in Ocala, Florida, also do acceptable work. The problem with John is that his equipment runs into the thousands of dollars, and that's out of the question for me.

I liked a couple of images I saw taken with a Konica Minolta Dimage X1 but have not really surveyed the field. Again, please don't recommend something costing thousands of dollars, because I can't afford that, but if anyone knows a better choice (or knows more about the Konica), I'd appreciate hearing your views.

Picture Taker · Answer

Yes, a nice DSLR and macro lens would be great, but you have expressed concern for the cost of the camera.  For eBay, almost ANY decent point and shoot camera that allows macro shooting would be more than adequate.  You can't display a very large image on eBay anyhow, so there is no point in uploading a 4000x3000 pixel image that they will downsize to something like 800x600 anyway.

You will get perfectly adequate image quality from a Canon Powershot 300 HS digital camera and the price isn't bad.  http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/753773-REG/Canon_5096B001_Powershot_300_HS_Digital.html

I took this photo with a similar Canon Powershot camera without really paying attention to details.  http://www.flickr.com/photos/samfeinstein/4724224653/  A train car would be more in the same plane of focus and so it would come out sharper.

Here's a somewhat cheaper Canon SD1300 IS.  I have not seen images from this camera, but I have seen plenty from the SD1200 and SD1000 and they would have been perfectly adequate for your purposes.  http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/675610-REG/Canon_4218B001_PowerShot_SD1300_IS_Digital.html

You might add a couple of lights, setting each about 45° from the subject.  Set your camera white balance to match the type lights, which will probably be incandescent.  You could also use a white piece of poster paper or something similar to bounce some light into the detail areas of your subject.

Anonymous · Answer

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What's a good, uploadable camera for taking highly detailed photos of small, fine scale models?

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