Playing with Macro

[RonM]

I have been reading this forum for a while and have enjoyed seeing all of the photos and reading the comments. Back in the 80s I had a Canon A-1 35mm. It was a good camera but I really didn’t know how to use all of its capabilities. How I wished I had a Forum like this back then! Well I just bought a Canon Rebel XTi. I still don't know what I am doing but I am learning a lot from this site. Here are some shots I took while playing with the macro. Please let me know what I can do to improve future attempts.

[clockdoc]

Hi Ron,
I, too, had a Canon A-1, back in the day. It would help to have a little more data here such as shutter speed, f/stop, ISO, lens used, how far you were from the subject , etc, so that I can give you more meaningful feedback. I assume you were in the macro mode in the camera. The last two shots are a little soft but that is probably due to a lack of depth of field and the auto focus mechanism of the camera. You have a pretty wide range of tones in the first three which means the rose looks good but the daisy is starting to have some blown out areas. The 2nd and 3rd shots appear a little under exposed on my monitor.

[jiminyClickit]

RonM, Welcome

Macro, my favorite! While you practice settings to address issues clockdoc has outlined above, rethink your composition, especially allowing headroom for roses. If it's crowded, shoot daisies separate, or change the angle. As Macro, you can feature parts of a rose, leaving some background, or filling frame with all rose. Try some backlighting too. Enjoy your new Canon!

[RonM]

Thank you for your responses.

Since I am still fairly new at this I used the Canon’s Easy shooting mode (Macro/Close-Up). The lens was my Tamron 70 – 300 mm. This is currently my only lens with Macro.
I put the Camera on my tripod at about 2 feet away. This was the minimum distance I could get and get everything in focus. My lighting was my son’s halogen desk lamp.

My biggest complaint about these shots are the dept of field problems. I wanted to play a little and see if I could get the rose and the daisies in focus together but my wife was worried that the lamp would hurt her flowers so my play time was limited. Oh well maybe next time.

[clockdoc]

Hi Ron,
You are learning with every shot. You may want to try your next test outdoors in sunlight so you can take advantage of a smaller f/stop. Having said that, depth of field is still very limited in the macro world. Alternatively, you may want to try shooting the same setup from a greater distance and use the telephoto portion of your lens, again with a small aperture. I look forward to seeing more of your work and will be happy to help out where I can.