To Bee or not to Bee

[Trankonia]

I am Looking for some feedback on focusing and general composition. Does the foreground distract with it out of focus?

Nikon D5000, Shutter 1/500, F11, ISO 200, Lens Nikon 85mm f/3.5 Macro

[Thunder_o_b]

Hi there

I have found that you really want to have as little foreground blur in a macro shot as possible, and if you can't get away from it, crop the shot so that it makes up a small percent of the total picture..

Your choice of focus in my view is right on, and very good.

I find that the lighting is too harsh in this shot. One solution that I use is to shade the subject with my left hand or my hat.

I took the liberty of working with your shot to help explain the above. If you wish I will take it down.

Keep in mind that with a file this small I was not able to maintain resolution, so the size is small.


This is what was done: Crop to give greater presence to the main subject and less to the OOF foreground..

In iPhoto:I dropped the highlights raised the shadows (made them lighter) raised the temperature and contrast.

In CS5: I used Topaz plugins to de-noise, enhance features and balance exposure.

I hope I have been helpful.

[Trankonia]

Thunder,

Thank you for the feedback and modification. I totally agree that it looks much better. I struggle with Macro focus.

Another person suggested Stacking and that sounds interesting but hard to do for "Live" subjects. I like your idea of cropping as much of the out-of-focus foreground as possible while retaining the context. I may find focusing a bit easier with a tripod as this was done with a monopod. I have a tripod but it is too clunky and I am looking to upgrade soon.

[Thunder_o_b]

Originally Posted by Trankonia

Thunder,

Thank you for the feedback and modification. I totally agree that it looks much better. I struggle with Macro focus.

Another person suggested Stacking and that sounds interesting but hard to do for "Live" subjects. I like your idea of cropping as much of the out-of-focus foreground as possible while retaining the context. I may find focusing a bit easier with a tripod as this was done with a monopod. I have a tripod but it is too clunky and I am looking to upgrade soon.

There is a focusing technique that I was taught by LordV (Brian Valentine), focus the lens close as you can on manual and then rock your body so you go past the subject's focal point, as you rock back through the point of focus take the shot. This takes a bit to get used to, but is a very effective method esp. at greater than one to one macro (I use the MP-E 65 and regularly hand hold at four to one using this method)

I photo stack handheld shots, but only with static subjects, and most of the time I use my macro station for the stacking of five to one and greater mag.

LordV handholds and photo stacks insects in flight, but don't ask me how he pulls this off. Google the whole name Brian Valentine (LordV) including the parentheses. He is one of the best macro photographers alive (but he would never say that)

He will be of immense help to you in developing your macro skills.

[Thunder_o_b]

As your macro skills increase you will find that tripods and mono pods are a hinderance and are not needed. Your best friend in macro is a properly setup flash rig. I use a flash rig 90% of the time even in day light, it allows me to shoot at what ever ISO and F stop I want and it freezes motion. Even though I am a Canon user, I will say that Nikon makes the best twin head macro flash out there. But as LordV has shown you don't need to spend all that money, up until recently he used a 430EX flash on a home made rig, and a diffuser made with two soda cans with a paper towel.

The guy is a real innovator. He has also come up with a way to mount microscope objective lenses to the camera body. I have modified his design for my 50D and use a 10X, but that is another thread

[Trankonia]

Thanks for the great information and insight!