another fungi from the camping trip--SOOC

[oneidapj]

From 2010_06_12

This fungi was taken just after a rain. I think the leaf should have been more in focus, somehow? maybe not. The subject is the drops! right?

The bright out of focus orbs just off the tip of the leaf---can be fixed with a program? I am just using the Canon-come-with-the-camera digital professional, only so much $$$$ to spend, someday will own one of the photoshop I here about.

I think the biggest thing I am looking for here is the composition (not in the computer cropping etc., but in the feild composition)---- any advise for the future? probably, more fungi and less leaf.? more to the left

And the camers settings? good?, this is a bit confusing for me still---- composition apature ISO DOF speed expature all the other camera seetings.etc. WOW!! mind boggling

It was very difficult to take this shot. I ended up laying on the ground cuz it was so low, hand holding. As I quickly found out on this rooky photo-macro shooting trip, my Velbon sx-621 is WAAAAAAAAAy too tall and the mount under was way to frustrating. First purchase on arrival home-----mini tripod!!

another thing that bothers me abit about this one is the very white bright area, center, 3/4 up the pic. is that quite okay? kind of like very white, bright waves in a creek?

Thank you for me posting and any suggestions and advise comeing my way. Oneida


Canon EOS REBEL T1i
EF 100mm 1/2.8 Macro USM with Hoya CR-PLR
ISO: 800
Exp: 1/200 sec
Ap: 2.8
Focal length: 100mm
no flash
hand held

[mrteacherdude]

If some of the pros on this forum look at this, they will likely give you much more concise and appropriate feedback than this, but here goes...

I see the primary subject as the water droplets in this one and they came out pretty good. I notice that your shutter speed is faster than your last post, which is likely why your edges for the most part seem cleaner to me, especially in the drops. Your camera is set to aperture priority and spot metering. I'm guessing you metered off the drops/area on the bottom of the "shelf" (for lack of a better term) of the fungus and then shot when you were pretty steady. As a result some of your water on the surface is somewhat blown out due the abundance of light there. Lighting conditions like this still elude me as well, but I can often fix stuff with some PP. You may be able to fix this or at least recover some of it with some PP, but I'm not sure.

In field framing - opinion only, but I'm thinking just the fungus is fine. Then again, I'm not bashful about taking dozens of pictures of the same thing with slightly different angles, perspectives, and camera settings and then sorting it all out when I get home. I don't see the leaf in the photo as adding anything to this particular subject unless it is providing some sort of contextual clues as to what the object is or where it is located. I think it would be difficult for you to have the portion of the fungus you are interested in and the leaf in focus anyway because your dof is shallow at that aperture.

I'm not sure about your camera settings, I've only been shooting DSLR for a couple of years now and so am still learning a lot. The way you have your camera set seems to be working for you at the moment while you are still trying to figure all of this out. The only thing I'm thinking at this time is that I personally prefer to shoot at lower ISO if I can. Since you are in an area full of fungus, conditions may not allow for this very easily without a flash or some other external source of light (some sort of reflector may help since you do have some sunlight available). But decreasing the ISO means you will need a lower shutter speed or lower aperture. You're already opened up all the way, and slower shutter speeds is tough when handheld. That's why I was wondering about your use of a polarizer in your previous post. It seems to me that unless you have a lot of glare/reflections in that area, you might benefit by taking the filter off because you would gain a couple of stops of light. There are some things you can do to help with all of this when using a tripod, but you already mentioned that you couldn't use it in this case.

I personally wouldn't worry too much about PP software quite yet and focus on getting to know your camera, lenses, and other equipment, and the software you currently have. Keep in mind that high end photo processing software has a steep learning curve unless you are just planning on using auto fix features. I'm inherently "cheap" (which is why I'm still lusting over the lens you have instead of just buying it) and don't always have a lot of time, so I tend to stay with inexpensive software that is more manageable, leaning-wise for my level of expertise and needs - I'm not a pro, so I don't think I need pro software (yet ). The software that came with your camera is pretty decent but I must admit I primarily use it for processing my RAW files. I hesitate to say it, but I have a somewhat older copy (version 6) of Photoshop Elements that was given to me that I use for almost all my PP work. It does almost everything I want it to do based on my level of expertise at this time, and I'm actually still learning something new I can do with it on an almost daily basis. This is not an advertisement for this software product, just a statement of what works for me. I know many people on this forum use GIMP, which is totally free. I've played around with that software as well, but keep finding myself going back to the ones I'm familiar with, and I like working in layers which I'm not sure GIMP does. But again - it's a powerful program and doesn't cost anything other than the electricity and bandwidth to download it. I even know one photographer who gets paid to do shoots on occasion who uses Picasa to do her editing work. Can't say that I would rely on that too much for PP but I do like it for organizing and doing some "what if" quick adjustments to see how things might look. And - it's free

My apologies to all if this post went beyond the scope of critique.

[aprillove20]

water droplets in this one and they came out pretty good ideas.

[bruceliv]

I agree with most of teacherdude's post above.
The problems are choice of f/stop and poor lighting.

If you don't have PP capabilities, some images might not be worth taking -- well, you should take them for gaining experience. An image like this one might have been slightly improved if it were underexposed a bit, then "fill" light in PP.

What you can control through the camera is DoF. This doesn't look like a subject that's a candidate for a wide open f/stop.

[oneidapj]

thank you for your comments, very helpful, sorry took so long to reply