Photographing frames is not as easy as people initially anticipate.  For this list it is an even more challenging task to comment on given the wide range of cameras.  Results will vary according to the type of camera used and the result you think you are going to get.

My experience is --

* Make a stand to hold the frame.  No matter how willing your wife is, the frame cannot move, not even a millimeter.  Before having a formal stand I put two hooks on the side of a hive and hung the frame there.  It worked.  A formal stand is not used just for photography, you can put a frame there when you are putting eggs into queen cells.

* No matter how good (or not good) your camera, use a tripod.  Small movements have a huge impact on this type of photography.   A cheap tripod is not too good unless it is solid / rigid.

* Set your expectations at the outset so that you know how to take the photograph --

-  one shot of a full frame will give NO detail of individual cells.
-  a telephoto zoom lens (or use the optical or digital zoom on a smaller camera) will help but then make several overlapping shots.
-  a macro lens is best but you may need 30 - 60 shots to make a single frame that shows the full detail in each cell.

* Think about lighting.  The sun is a very good friend here.  Just watch out for shadows in the cells. The sun will move so ...  hurry up.  Also take care to avoid over exposure - sunlight on light areas can often over expose areas where the darking areas are under exposed.  The way round this is to explore with bracketing.

* Flash also generates shadows but you can use flash together with sunlight to balance things up a bit.  A white board can also be used to reflect some dedicated light onto the subject.

* With macro work, ring flash is the best.  Most will not use this though since the cost of a ring flash is most remarkable.  Minuscule movements of the camera will put the shot out  of focus.  You will not notice until you get to the editing stage though ..... :(

* Be prepared to edit ......   the simplest form of edit is to Crop.  This will be essential when making a single shot of a frame.  A quick and dirty for Windows users would be a free program called irfanview.  However, there is a more comprehensive program called The Gimp (same as photoshop) which runs cross platform and cropping is easy.  That program will also let you use a curves tool which will help you change the light levels on an image.  Not hard.  No ... really not hard.

* If you take mulitiple shots of a frame and want one image then you  need to stitch them together.  This is also called making a panorama.  There are many free programs to do this.  The one I use is called Hugin, it works really well.  I think there is an add-on for The Gimp to do this as well.  Lots of choice for free if you look round.  Do note however that stitching can take time on a computer with little memory and will result in really large files.  You will however get the detail.

* Just because you have only a point and shoot does NOT mean that you cannot get some great shots of frames.  Have a go and surprise yourself .....

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