How to take clear, close up pictures for fashion blogging?

Thank you for your suggestions - Sorcerer!

Experiment with manual settings more. You need a flash. Not from the camera, but an extra hot shoe mounted. Usually, I have a white cloth background. a product at the center. Aim towards the product with manual focus and manual settings (1/40 @ f5.6 with ISO 800). Have the light aimed towards the ceiling (for me usually it's second highest bright setting). The light bounces from the ceiling and spreads on the product and the white background. You may have to do some adjustments but do some experiments on your own. In the end, these are the product pictures I get:

Thank you CyberKid for that elaborate reply! Much appreciated!

Regards,

Vidya Gupta.

Though, I'm not a pro, being an enthusiast, and someone recently having moved to a dSLR, there are a couple of things that I'd like to share with you.

1. Most professional photographers, I guess, infact all of them, use a number of separate lens kits for different photography needs. While most of the budget dSLR's that are sold here come with a general purpose kit lens of say 18-55mm, which does do some good work, but for macro shots, it is preferred to have a separate macro lens, choice of which depends on your subject. Most other highend cameras come as a body only, where you are required to separately purchase len kits.

2. Based on the camera and the lens kits available to you, there are a number of focus settings. A number of times, while in macro mode, for the camera, it is not always possible to get you the best possible focus when your lens is too close to the subject (on a standard 18-55mm lens kit), in such scenarios, it's good to switch on to manual focusing mode, if your lens allows that setting. This way, you are in control of the focus settings, and you get to decide which parts you want to get a crisp focus on.

3. Lighting plays a significant role in getting perfect photos. Anything lit up by the built in flash, or speedguns directly pointed at the subject won't really turn the best. That's the reason, pros use those umbrella like flashes. Ensure better lighting to get great pictures.

4. Trial and Error. As you might be already knowing this, a lot depends on trial and error, and as a photographer, you need to take multiple shots from different angles, settings, and then decide on which one is the best.

5. Post processing is a inevitable part of photography. So, it is usually suggested that if your camera allows, you should click pictures in RAW format, as it being an uncompressed and unprocessed output from the camera sensor, allows more headrooom for post processing thank jpg or bmp images.

There are a number of pro photographers here on IB. You can try getting in touch with one of them, and they might be able to guide you better.