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Old 22-03-12, 22:38
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petrochemist petrochemist is offline  
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Location: Clacton, Essex
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No you don't need a macro lens.

I think miketoll pretty much sums it up, but I'll add a few comments.

White balance is the most important aspect for getting the colours right, though there are usually other settings in the menus that might want tweaking (My K7 has various shooting modes such as Vibrant, Bright, Natural, Muted... which effect the JPEG colour output) the contrast setting might also make quite a bit of difference to the final image.

For the texture I find an off camera TTL flash is the easiest way to go. There are plenty of TTL flash cables available on e-bay & the likes for £10-20, that will work with most makes of camera. Flash is also generally one of the easiest lights to get the right white balance for (Tungsten & fluorescent lights are much more variable). If you've not already got a TTL flash (they are quite expensive) custom white balance with a desk light should work OK. In either case as mike said it want's to be coming from towards one side, just how far over depends on how strong you want the texture to show.

I don't think a calibrated monitor will make that much difference in your situation, where you a taking images for a website, as most visitors of the site won't have calibrated monitors. So in any event the colours being displayed will vary somewhat from the true values...
If you do try tweaking a RAW image to match the colours then a calibrated monitor may put you closer to the average of all the uncalibrated views, but with the right white balance/colour settings/contrast the JPEG straight from the camera should do that reasonably well.
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Mike

Pentax K5ii & Panasonic G5 user (with far too many bits to list)
Member of North Essex Photographic Workshop
Also online with PentaxUser.co.uk, Flickr, MU-43, MFLenses...

Last edited by petrochemist; 22-03-12 at 22:45.
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