2 macro shots

[Craigie]

Today I decided to go out and take some macro shots without my tripod and try it hand held and manual focus my shots.
This is a bit alien to me as the majority my macro shots I have used a tripod.

With the camera on manual focus I found that I could get nearer the insect and still have some of it in focus, where as if it was on auto focus at the same distance apart it could not focus.
Hope that makes sense.

#2 is been cropped a fair bit as this was a fairly small fly.
The images below are about the best 2 of todays shoot.
Canon 6D, Canon EF 100mm 1:2.8 USM
C&C welcome

1 f7.1, 1/400sec, ISO 200


2 f6.3, 1/320sec, ISO 160

[Ziggy]

Nice looking DFly Gary.

[bje07]

nice colors but the background is too visible and does not emphasize bugs

[Shadowman]

Nice shots.

[madcrow]

Two nice images. Like colours on fly in 2.

[bnnrcn]

Nice trials Gary The BG doesn't help very much in #1.

PS. Thanks for the info about manual focus.

[Craigie]

Thanks to all for your C&C, it is always appreciated.
With reference to the BG, the bugs for some reason were only landing on the top of the wooden fence, hence the poor BG,

[Craigie]

This shot was taken on the same shoot as other images.
When I took this particular shot I had no idea it would look like this.
It was shot in raw converted to jpg in PS with minimal PP, no blurring or cropping done and only sharpened in unsharp mask for posting here.
The camera was placed on the wooden hand rail and roughly the same level the fly was on.
I manual focused the camera and was about 9 inches from the subject.
Canon 6D Canon EF 100mm 1:2.8 USM
Ex 1/400sec f6.3 ISO 160
Basically I do not know why this image has a band of clear focus, any assistance would be appreciated.
C&C welcome

[Dave Humphries]

Basically I do not know why this image has a band of clear focus, any assistance would be appreciated.

That's just the way Depth of Field (DoF) works Gary,

Just that normally, you never see it so clearly because the scene doesn't include a textured surface between camera and subject and beyond.

Also, the effect is far more pronounced with macro than it would be say, with a shot down the street taken at ground level, even if a wide aperture is used.

With regard to C&C, the shot is a good demonstration of DoF, but artistically, I suggest it could do with a severe crop to enlarge the subject in the frame, or at the very least, crop so the fly is not dead centre of frame.

HTH, Dave

[Craigie]

That's just the way Depth of Field (DoF) works Gary,

Just that normally, you never see it so clearly because the scene doesn't include a textured surface between camera and subject and beyond.

Also, the effect is far more pronounced with macro than it would be say, with a shot down the street taken at ground level, even if a wide aperture is used.

With regard to C&C, the shot is a good demonstration of DoF, but artistically, I suggest it could do with a severe crop to enlarge the subject in the frame, or at the very least, crop so the fly is not dead centre of frame.

HTH, Dave

Thanks for yous assistance Dave, the image is not one I was going to keep anyway, I only posted it for technical reasons.
Which you kindly answered

[ajohnw]

It would be interesting to see a full resolution crop of the fly and band of sharp focus without any sharpening or contrast manipulation. To you as well as it would give you an idea of the actual depth of field available. As you get closer to the insects you'll find the dof gets even narrower and slower apertures are needed.

I do use autofocus for insects at times. Often macro lenses have a switch which limits the focal distance range. For closer work that usually has to be set for the lowest range. AF can waste dof as it may focus onto an insect rather than into it a little. In some cases such as the dragon fly where it could be persuaded to focus onto the elongated body of the insect it may work well. Side onto a fly for instance is unlikely to work so well but the the aperture can be closed down more than what would ideally be needed. Personally I always use AF to frame the insect and set the distance for the shot. I try to judge the detail that is likely to result via the viewfinder to avoid going closer than needed.

One day I will get some idea of what the ideal aperture is for a given magnification. As things stand I tend to err on the slow side. Over the winter I am thinking of working through something Bill does to get an idea of dof on people at sports events. This is a chart for one of his lenses he posted some time ago.



He's using framing to gauge what aperture to set for the dof he needs for the shot. The idea should work well for insects as we can see that we need to frame, say 1 inch or 2 inches or what ever so with a bit of trial shooting can find out what apertures are needed for various depths of field. A suitable target for trials might be a rule at 45 degrees.

John
-

[Dave Humphries]

Thanks for your assistance Dave, the image is not one I was going to keep anyway, I only posted it for technical reasons.

The transition between sharp and (very) blurry does seem unnaturally well defined, so I suspect there may also be some 'detail radius based' sharpening being applied which has made the transition more noticeable.

I only mentioned C&C because you had "C&C welcome" just above the image

I now see that's a default and probably didn't apply

[Craigie]

This image has only been cropped then resized and changed from raw to JPG for the forum. There has been no PP work done on it at all.
Dave the settings on the first image in unsharp mask was Amount 180% Radius 0.4 and Threshold 3
Thanks John for taking the time to give me the info.