My First Macro!

[ike]

Hey guys,

Was a bit annoyed today so decided to go for a long walk down river to clear my head, unfortunately as i set off it started raining. so i couldn't get any immediate shots, but later on the rain stopped and i decided to try some macro shots.

Im really impressed with the result of this one,



the only problem i have noticed, is that isn't sharp enough around the lower petals, is this because i used auto focus?

all criticism welcome,

ike,

[Saralonde]

Most likely you had a wide open aperture (small number) which gave you a narrow dof (depth of field). When you focused on the center of the flower, the narrow dof blurred the background nicely, but also blurred the foreground a bit.

[ike]

My aperature was set automatically i believe, as i was using the SP mode on my camera,

The settings are:

f/3.7
Exposure time 1/170 sec
Iso 100

is there any way to sharpen it up using PS or anything?

thanks

ike,

[Saralonde]

Do you have Photoshop? I believe there is a sharpening feature there (unsharp mask) that may sharpen it a little for you, although it will not be perfect. If you don't have PS,try downloading Picasa or Gimp for free.

[Digidave]

It's a nice shot, but to prevent that from happening in the future, you basically have 2 routes to go. The first being, get a straight-on view of the flower. You need to have all the petals the same distance from the lens(within the same depth-of-field). The second choice would be to raise your Aperture & doing so would give you a larger Depth-of-field. I think the shot is nice just the way it is though.

[clockdoc]

I agree with digidave. In our quest for perfect focus we sometimes expect too much from our cameras. I think the photo offers a nice balance of tonal quality and sharpness. I have been experimenting with using the macro setting but at the telephoto end of the zoom as opposed to the wide angle position. On my Sony F707 I have to be more than 3 feet away from the subject in that mode but I feel this gives me a little better depth of field. Try using aperture priority and use the next to highest f/stop available on your camera. I look forward to seeing more of your macro work.

[wulf]

Try taking a series of pictures of a ruler, gradually adjusting the aperture - this will give you a sense of how shallow DoF can be when the lens is wide-open (small f/stop number) (I have done this recently but you should try with your own camera).

Wulf

[Dan Rowe]

Originally Posted by wulf

Try taking a series of pictures of a ruler, gradually adjusting the aperture - this will give you a sense of how shallow DoF can be when the lens is wide-open (small f/stop number) (I have done this recently but you should try with your own camera).

Wulf

That might be the simplest yet most usefull advice I've read in this forum. Great suggestion, Wulf.

[xxpinballxx]

I think the top half of the shot is nearly perfect.....like you said out of focus petals on the bottom of the photo are the only spot that needs improved.
I think PS might help a bit but unless you create a layer of just those botom petals its going to sharpen the entire picture which sometimes make already sharp dges look a bit "fake". Don't really know how else todescribe that look.

Wulf like Dan said that is a great way of finding out all about the aperture and DOF. I am going to try that today.....Should give me a good start on using the Aperture setting correctly.

[ike]

Thanks guys,

wulf - definately going to try that, and hopefully i can get my aperatures better,

digidave - i do have one with all the petals facing forward, and it looked alot better than this one, but i didnt like it as much because they were all facing forward and it looked less like a real flower.

xxpinballxx - will try that when i get home from work tonight. will be posting my results tomorrow.

thanks again guys, all your critisicm just makes me want to progress further with my photography.

ike,