Flower C+C

[anthonymagister]

Hello, all. I have finally delved into the depths of macro photography. This is my first serious attempt at a good photo. Please tell me what you think.

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Anthony,

I like the composition, there's not much I can say without a lot of wild guessing because we don't have the EXIF data attached - can you tell us the camera, focal length, aperture, shutter speed and iso please?

One thing that is apparent is; I think the bold colours have fooled the camera's meter into over exposing the shot and this may well have lost you some texture in the petals and saturation in the image.

Focus looks OK on right, perhaps a little more Depth of Field would help, or even Focus Stacking, to get the whole thing sharp.

Hope that helps,

[anthonymagister]

I used a 60mm prime lens at f16 and 15 second shutter speed. (kind of a dark room). I had to set ISO to 400 because at 100 the exposure were getting to long and tedious. I was using a Canon T3i. I still have a lot to learn about metering properly and this may have hurt my exposure a little here. As far as focusing goes, I manually focused the image and focus stacked three shots. One with the center of the flower focused, one with the small petals in focus, and one with the large petals. in focus. One thing I struggled with was that I have a very old house and my floors have a little bounce to them (too much space between the floor supports), and even though the camera was on a tripod I had to wait a bit between shots for the flower to stop swaying. I used a small lightbox for lighting. Are you pretty knowledgeable about Macro photography? I am just trying it out for the first time and although enjoyable, I am finding it to be very different from my typical landscape fare. (i.e. more tedious and exacting). What aperture do you typically use in your shots. I figured the smaller the better, right? I could have gone to f22 on my shot but I read once in a book on Macro shooting that I shouldn't push it the smallest aperture because it isn't as sharp. Do you find that too? Thanks again for your previous and any other future input you might have.