Critique Finally some detail

JonnyH89

JonnyH89

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Jonny
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Haven't had the camera out in a while so took it with me mountain biking today so I could go round the gardens after. These are the first insect macro shots I've taken that I thought were even worth processing after many many attempts and missing focus every time. Hand held, natural light. Any feedback good and bad welcome, also can anyone tell me what the wasp looking things are?







 
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Very nice work Jonny, my only crit would be some slight amendments to composition, but hardly worth mentioning.

I'm going to assume by "wasp looking things" you aren't referring to the wasp in the first image, or the bee in the third for that matter ;) In the 2nd and 4th image you have caught hoverflies. These are bee/wasp mimics, but don't have a sting at all and are true flies, in that they only have two wings rather than four (as found with bees and wasps). They are excellent fliers and very territorial. You'll often see them hover in the same spot (hence the name) as they guard the prime mating sites.
 
Thanks Timmy, I'll admit I wasn't paying much attention to composition. Too busy trying to get focus. Yea 2nd and 4th shots, I was hoping to catch one hovering but just as I pressed the shutter they would dart a few cm's away.
 
JonnyH89 said:
These are the first insect macro shots I've taken that I thought were even worth processing after many many attempts and missing focus every time. Hand held, natural light. Any feedback good and bad welcome
Click to expand...

It looks like these are focused ok to me. Are you using manual focus or autofocus? Whichever you are using, you might want to try the other one, to see if you get a higher success rate. FWIW I use both, depending on the scene, shooting conditions etc and depending on which rig I'm using.

f/11 is a popular aperture to use. You could get more in focus (greater depth of field) if you used a smaller aperture of course, but there are differing views about that because of loss of sharpness from diffraction with small apertures. FWIW I use the smallest apertures I can, but I'm in a minority on that. You might want to try f/16 and f/22, and even f/32 if your lens permits to see how the results look to you. (I use up to f/32 on my 70D).

The fast shutter speeds will have avoided softness from camera shake. In fact, and especially if that is a VR lens, you could afford to lower the ISO from 1600 if you wanted and still have a good shutter speed. With VR on a 105 lens, 1/100 sec might be fast enough even at 1:1 (for which the recommended shutter speed would be at least 1/200 sec if not using image stabilisation). You'd need to experiment to find that out. But as an example, with these shots you would have been able to use ISO 800 and f/22 and still get shutter speeds above 1/100 sec.

I'd experiment with different settings to see what works for you.
 
GardenersHelper said:
It looks like these are focused ok to me. Are you using manual focus or autofocus? Whichever you are using, you might want to try the other one, to see if you get a higher success rate. FWIW I use both, depending on the scene, shooting conditions etc and depending on which rig I'm using.

f/11 is a popular aperture to use. You could get more in focus (greater depth of field) if you used a smaller aperture of course, but there are differing views about that because of loss of sharpness from diffraction with small apertures. FWIW I use the smallest apertures I can, but I'm in a minority on that. You might want to try f/16 and f/22, and even f/32 if your lens permits to see how the results look to you. (I use up to f/32 on my 70D).

The fast shutter speeds will have avoided softness from camera shake. In fact, and especially if that is a VR lens, you could afford to lower the ISO from 1600 if you wanted and still have a good shutter speed. With VR on a 105 lens, 1/100 sec might be fast enough even at 1:1 (for which the recommended shutter speed would be at least 1/200 sec if not using image stabilisation). You'd need to experiment to find that out. But as an example, with these shots you would have been able to use ISO 800 and f/22 and still get shutter speeds above 1/100 sec.

I'd experiment with different settings to see what works for you.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I'm using manual as I find it easier/faster than the camera/lens hunting. There is a limit switch so that might help with that.

I think my the main difference this time was due to the aperture. Normally i'd be pretty close to wide open thinking the faster shutter speed would help. Realising now that's not much use when the DoF is way too narrow for me to get focus in the correct place to begin with.

It is a VR lens, I really do need to try playing about with the settings more rather than setting them to something semi random and shooting away.
 
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This is very well rendered… I would consider a more artistic approach to final cropping.
 
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Not really! …it could very well be the worst thing I could do for you. Explore yourself and
your good shots. Discover new ways to relate and express. The best approach can only
come out of this effort of yours. This is YOUR artistic intent.
 
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