Beginner Common Darter Males

I've had a look through the first few shots on your flickr photostream, and I think its easier to put my comments in one place.

There are some shots that have potential - the second one here for example could have been very good but you've hit focus on the tail rather than the head - there is a huge difference in the sharpness at either end. Pity, as the eye level POV is excellent.

Looking at your settings, you're using much too low an ISO setting - at the ones I looked into you never went above ISO 320. Your camera won't even break sweat until ISO 800 and thats only if you're cropping heavily.

Get the ISO ramped up - one example I noted was at ISO 100 and 1/400th, so going by that, pushing up to ISO 800 would have given you an extra stop of shutter speed for increased sharpness and 2 more stops of aperture for DoF and hitting the sweet spot on your lens.

I don't know what focus mode you use, but for a stationary dragonfly, go with a single point and keep the af on continuous and active at the point of exposure as even with a stationary subject, it only takes a little movement from you to blow the whole thing.

Mike
 
pooley said:
I've had a look through the first few shots on your flickr photostream, and I think its easier to put my comments in one place.

There are some shots that have potential - the second one here for example could have been very good but you've hit focus on the tail rather than the head - there is a huge difference in the sharpness at either end. Pity, as the eye level POV is excellent.

Looking at your settings, you're using much too low an ISO setting - at the ones I looked into you never went above ISO 320. Your camera won't even break sweat until ISO 800 and thats only if you're cropping heavily.

Get the ISO ramped up - one example I noted was at ISO 100 and 1/400th, so going by that, pushing up to ISO 800 would have given you an extra stop of shutter speed for increased sharpness and 2 more stops of aperture for DoF and hitting the sweet spot on your lens.

I don't know what focus mode you use, but for a stationary dragonfly, go with a single point and keep the af on continuous and active at the point of exposure as even with a stationary subject, it only takes a little movement from you to blow the whole thing.

Mike
Click to expand...
Thank you for the notes. I was focusing on the head, but it's possible I may have forgotten to put it back to single point after using the 9 point area for flying ones.
I had the Auto ISO set to a max of 1600 with a minimum shutter speed of 1/320th as it is a 200mm lens on a crop sensor body, I thought this would have been good enough with the VR II on the lens but I will set it higher next time I go out.
 
Orangecroc said:
Thank you for the notes. I was focusing on the head, but it's possible I may have forgotten to put it back to single point after using the 9 point area for flying ones.
I had the Auto ISO set to a max of 1600 with a minimum shutter speed of 1/320th as it is a 200mm lens on a crop sensor body, I thought this would have been good enough with the VR II on the lens but I will set it higher next time I go out.
Click to expand...

Theres a huge amount of guff written on the internet nowadays about the old rule of shutter speeds and focal length. Simple fact is, with todays MP crammed sensors, getting the shots tack sharp is a whole lot easier and more reliable by getting the shutter speed up as high as you can.

There are numerous examples of sharp low shutter speed shots, so it can be done - a contact I have in Canada called Dan Cadiuex is an absolute master at handholding his 7d2/500mm+1.4x converter combo, but as a general rule you really should be getting the speeds as fast as you can. The ISO can handle it, especially with a little careful processing.

Mike
 
Orangecroc said:
I've just looked at the focus point using ViewNX 2 and it shows that I hit the focus bang on the hair sticking out of the center of the head!
Click to expand...

Thats where getting as much DoF would have helped.

If you look at the first shot from above, you can see where the red eyes make a shape that looks like a number '8'. Now switch between the 2 shots and see where you focus point has hit on shot 2 - You've hit focus on the middle part of the '8'. It might only be a small distance between the near part and the centre of the '8', but working up close with a telephoto you needed to be hitting the nearest part of the eye, then using a small f-stop to bring the rest of the shot into focus.

Its rare that you can get away without getting the eye pin sharp.

Hope that makes a little sense - it was the best way I could think of trying to use your shots as the example!

Mike
 
pooley said:
Thats where getting as much DoF would have helped.

If you look at the first shot from above, you can see where the red eyes make a shape that looks like a number '8'. Now switch between the 2 shots and see where you focus point has hit on shot 2 - You've hit focus on the middle part of the '8'. It might only be a small distance between the near part and the centre of the '8', but working up close with a telephoto you needed to be hitting the nearest part of the eye, then using a small f-stop to bring the rest of the shot into focus.

Its rare that you can get away without getting the eye pin sharp.

Hope that makes a little sense - it was the best way I could think of trying to use your shots as the example!

Mike
Click to expand...
It does make sense, I will have to push up to f/14 or f/18 with these next time. I obviously hadn't payed attention to the aperture properly on the first one here as I had left it at f/5.6 but was using f/11 on the second shot. I definitely get carried away with chasing them and forgetting to check my settings.
 
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