That's how I did most of the photography of my old layout. I had a Canon 5 mp point and shoot, but it offered enough manual settings that I could monkey with the aperture and the exposure time.
Being merely an amateur photographer, I had all kinds of work arounds, especially for "night" shots. I'd set the camera up, either sitting it right on the layout or on a mini tripod, or sometimes on a proper tripod if the angle required it.
I would flip the room lights off, click the shutter, then while it was open, I would switch the structure lights on and off, then the headlight (using DCC) on and off to prevent those lights from over exposing. The low ambient light helped mask any depth of field issues, and the long exposure time pulled in a lot of things that otherwise would have been lost in the background.
For daylight shots, the long exposure did a good job of smoothing out the depth of field. This one could have benefitted from dimming the room lights a bit more.
And tight focus on close ups became one of my favorites.
Certainly none of the above will be mistaken for the work of Paul Dolkos or Lou Sassi, but I was satisfied with the results, and still enjoy thumbing through all the images I shot with relative ease.
Lee
