ants on an apple

[Irene K]

I took this on the zoo the other day through some glass. I do not have a macro lens and could not get the auto focus to work so close so I tried manual focus for the first time. I was just wondering how it looks. Obviously the ant in the middle is most in focus, but is it enough in focus? Any other suggestions are welcome as well. Thanks!



NIkon D90
f/5.3
1/40
ISO 1000
flash did not fire

[chicagojohn]

Originally Posted by Irene K

I took this on the zoo the other day through some glass. I do not have a macro lens and could not get the auto focus to work so close so I tried manual focus for the first time. I was just wondering how it looks. Obviously the ant in the middle is most in focus, but is it enough in focus? Any other suggestions are welcome as well. Thanks!

NIkon D90
f/5.3
1/40
ISO 1000
flash did not fire

I like this subject because it kind of reminds me of all of us "ants" crawling around on the planet earth....

You mention depth of field, where the focal point on the closest surface of the apple puts that ant in sharp focus while the ants further away are a little fuzzier. I like the picture anyway, but if you want to experiment with depth of field, the main thing that controls that is the aperture. But going to a significantly smaller aperture when you were already at 1/40 presumably without a tripod, and photographing moving ants in any case, your only way to compensate with exposure value would be to increase ISO, already at 1000.

So you might have tried ISO 3200, with a gain of 1.5 EV (and your camera goes to 6400, I think), and maybe try an f/11 to see what that would do for you, trying a few shots where you move the focus back further in increments manually to sort of bracket it. That would have probably reduced the nice blurriness or "bokeh" of the background though that helps to set off the subject.

It may have made enough difference in depth of field depending upon the focal length of the lens you were using and how far away you were from the subject.

Of course, if you had set the flash on manual and set shutter speed at 1/40, maybe the aperture would have automatically reduced to a size of f/11 or higher to give better depth of field.

Just some things to play around with next time. I enjoyed it, and especially the line of ants walking downward in sillouette along the left hand edge.

PS I forgot to mention that if you shoot in RAW format, you will have more options in conversion to a JPEG or TIFF image, particularly in the areas of exposure and also white balance. In this case, you have a blown-out white specular reflectance on the apple at about two o'clock. The sensors in this area are "full" and have lost their ability to express detail in the image. I think that would be easier to deal with starting with a RAW format file since the sensors have about 20 times the number of increments in gradation. However, the histogram is an important source of information too (as opposed to the camera's 8-bit display which doesn't tell the whole story.) You would try to make sure you don't have significant portions pushed up against either the left or right sides of the histogram. Then you'll have the best opportunity to convert the RAW file in terms of exposure. If the histogram shows significant clipping on either side, the information is not there even for a 12-bit RAW file. Again, just something to try out and experiment with.
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