Tea in my lavender garden

[Jill H]

Hello all - thank you for looking. I really appreciate any comments you make as I want to learn and improve.

I am very new to the world of "Still Life" and have been working intermittently the last couple of months with a light tent. On Monday I decided to take still life out into the garden - and would be very interested to hear your comments. I guess I am trying for that house or food magazine type shot.

The story is - enjoying a very English afternoon tea in the Mediterranean part of an Australia garden on an autumn afternoon dreaming of returning to the lavender fields of Provence for the summer.

From Light

Taken 17 May 2010
Canon 450D - 18-55mm lens with skylight filter
Aperture Priority
F/29
1/15 secs
ISO 200
Focal length 34mm
White balance - sunlight
No flash
Tripod used

I used white card to try and get some light onto the left front of the tea cup as the sunlight was coming from the right hand side. Even though I used F/29 I don't know why more of the picture is not in focus. Can you help me with an explanation for this? Thanks.

[ldontheedge]

Originally Posted by Jill H

Even though I used F/29 I don't know why more of the picture is not in focus. Can you help me with an explanation for this?

While you had the right idea by stopping down the aperture to achieve sharpness throughout the photo, you took it a little far. If you've ever taken a physics course, you'll know that diffraction occurs when trying to squeeze waves, such as light waves, through a very tiny opening, such as a lens stopped all the way down to f/29. At some point, the softening effects of diffraction offset the gain in sharpness that you would normally gain from using a very small aperture. I never go any smaller than f/22, and I usually like to stay around f/13, maybe going up to f/16 if I really need to. Considering how close your objects are together, I don't think you'd need to stop down any smaller than f/9 or maybe f/11. It's a somewhat confusing concept - see Diffraction Limited Photography: Pixel Size, Aperture and Airy Disks for a great article on the subject. But basically, just avoid apertures smaller than around f/16 unless you have a really good reason why you need to go smaller.

You also mentioned that you had the camera mounted on a tripod - did you use a remote, or set a countdown timer on the camera? The amount of camera shake caused by you pushing the shutter can be surprising - whenever possible, when you have your camera mounted on a tripod, turn on the two second self-timer, so that by the time the photo is actually taken, any shake caused by your finger will be gone. And another thing - I assume the 18-55mm lens you're using is the kit lens from Canon, the 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS? The IS stands for Image Stabilization, which is controlled by a switch on the lens itself. It's a great feature to reduce camera shake when handholding a camera. Unfortunately, it often does more harm than good on a tripod. The IS feature will actually search for any shake, and in the process it produces a small amount of camera shake. You will have better results by turning off the IS feature whenever you have the camera mounted on a tripod.

I really didn't address your image at all, these are just a bunch of general techniques to get sharper images. Sorry for the lengthy post - I hope all that makes some amount of sense!

[Jill H]

thankyou so much Michael for taking the time to write to me. I really do appreciate you input. I know I have a lot to learn! And you have brought up a lot of points which will be good for me to address next time I am out shooting. So much to think about when you have your finger on the button...

You are right about the image stabiliser and I was unaware of the effect the tripod would have on it. Perhaps I should have shot hand held !? I have a remote and a self timer and never think to use them....

Thank you so much for the info about Fstops. Certainly a confusing concept. I couldn't work out why the whole picture wasn't sharp. When would one use F/29 then??

I will go back and see if I changed the Fstop during the shoot and what the different results were.

THANK YOU again for your time and your reply.