Well the camera is a Minolta Dynax 7D. I decided to go minolta as I already had one lens, and the inbuilt anti shake system seemed like a good idea. Probably a mistake as I should have gone for one of the big two. I'm pretty disappointed with the metering on the camera in general usage. But love being able to change ASA "mid-roll" (you can see I am a recent film convert).

The lighting setup is pretty nice. I'm not so good with close lights, so I used one that is 93,000,000 miles away. I waited until it is a pretty sunny day and then photograph the watch in a shaded area, on a white table, with lots of reflected light from nearby windows & white walls...(my kitchen has alot of white). Not really sophisticated, but it is pretty cheap (well, unless you have to include the price of the kitchen, but thats another story).

I'll have to get into lights one day, but have not got round to it yet.

Photo was hand held, probably at 1/200-1/300 - maybe the antishake helps out a bit, maybe not, haven't experimented fully. It's not the magic cure I (unrealistically) hoped for low light shooting.

For 35mm, the lens was a useful 24-105mm zoom Minolta lens, is not quite so wide or useful being 36-160mm for digital (generally I like taking landscapes and like wide lenses), but I use the 160mm for the close ups. The macro capability of the lens is pretty weak, so I photograph from 3-4 ft away and crop the subject. Resolution seems good enough to crop and end up with a decent 1100 pixel photo, OK on screen, could not be blown up much though.

So that's it. Last macro photography I did was model airplanes 20 years ago, so most of my inspiration is from some of the guys who post amazing photos on this forum.