I had a really lucky run with some macro photography this weekend.
I have two subjects that I particularly liked and I thought I would share.
My first subject is a Dragonfly.
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Canon 40D at 100mm (EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM)
1/250 sec f/11, ISO 100
Canon 580EX II Flash with a home made light diffuser trying to soften the light.
Hand held.
Image 1: 1:1 crop.
Note: I also did a couple of spot removals on a couple of tiny bits of junk on the compound eye in image 1 that I thought were a little distracting. I did not remove them in image 2 at the bottom.
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Canon 40D at 100mm (EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM)
1/250 sec f/11, ISO 100
Canon 580EX II Flash with a home made light diffuser trying to soften the light.
Hand held.
Image 2: Full image from above. This was as close as I could get and still focus.
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Canon 40D at 100mm (EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM)
1/250 sec f/11, ISO 100
Canon 580EX II Flash with a home made light diffuser trying to soften the light.
Hand held.
Image 3 : Just another angle to show off the pattern in the wings, and the colour of the tail.
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Canon 40D at 100mm (EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM)
1/250 sec f/11, ISO 100
Canon 580EX II Flash with a home made light diffuser trying to soften the light.
Hand held.
Image 4 : A pretty red Dragonfly was algo buzzing around.
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Canon 40D at 100mm (EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM)
1/250 sec f/11, ISO 100
Canon 580EX II Flash with a home made light diffuser trying to soften the light.
Hand held.
Image 5 : Same red Dragonfly perching on another twig.
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Canon 40D at 100mm (EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM)
1/250 sec f/11, ISO 100
Canon 580EX II Flash with a home made light diffuser trying to soften the light.
Hand held.
Image 6 : 1:1 crop of Image 5 to show detail in the compound eyes.
Cheers!
Craig.
Craig,
ReplyDeleteInteresting portfolio of Dragonflies. However it feels disjointed and jumpy.
If I were to put together a portfolio I would try three shots. One wide angle showing your subject in it's surrounding, one showing a close up of your subject with out anything clipped and a third showing a small part of the subject in greater detail.
With this collection of shots, you seem to be missing the context shot. Also you seem to have two different subjects in one collection. I would probably separate the portfolio, with the yellow brown dragonfly in one and the red dragonfly in the other.
As a stand alone image I quite like the forth one. The green background complements the red dragonfly nicely.
While National Geographic might not approve, I'm quite a big fan of digital gardening after all I don't shoot for them, yet. Those specks of dirt on the dragonfly's eyes in the second shot are quite distracting I would have removed them too, in both shots.
Brutal Enough?
steve
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteI kind of got carried away after I got a few keepers from this set.
I originally was only posting Image 1, 2, & 3, but as an after thought (actually I posted the first edition last night, and because no one had commented yet this morning), I decided to pop in some other pics for fun so you could see the red dragonfly too.
Image 4 is a funny one because it includes probably the only green weed left alive in my backyard :)
I would say my favourite images from above would be Image 1, and Image 6, then Image 5.
The other ones don't have enough in sharp focus for me.
I should have mentioned the reason I left the the specs on the eyes in Image 2 was so you could see the changes I made to Image 1 and get an idea what the original image was actually like.
I don't really know how to digitally garden out some of the twigs, but I'll have a go at it and if they look ok, I'll add them as a followup.
Cheers
Craig.
Ps: Brutal is good. It's made a big improvement in my macro photography already and is much appreciated.
Hi Craig,
ReplyDeleteA sharp photo isn't always interesting to look at. Number 4 has some nice colours and the dragonfly is in a somewhat dynamic location. The small image here is plenty sharp enough. However if you click on the image for a larger view then the quality starts to fall apart.
I would rather look at a small but interesting image than a big yet boring image.
Also by digital gardening I mean remove high contrast spots that are distracting from the main subject of an image. In your case the specks of dust on the dragonfly's eyes. They were well worth removing. It makes the image much cleaner and more pleasing to look at. It's so under-rated yet so simple (with most software) to do.
steve
Hi Steve,
ReplyDeleteI do like to view images as large as I can get them on my monitor without it cropping them. The thumbnail images are mainly for reference to me, but I always comment based on the full image after clicking on it.
You can see how this affects Image 4 in particular. As it looks ok as a small thumbnail, but not so interesting when you view a larger version of it.
Thanks for clarifying the digital gardening. I thought you meant cutting out the twigs in the background originally.
Also, I'm really surprised that some of the macro shots I've taken recently where I actually got compound eyes to be visible, that some of the insects have all kinds of gunk on their eyes. Must be a bummer not to have eye lids to keep them clean.
Cheers!
Craig.
Craig,
ReplyDeleteInsects (and animals) of all kinds have gunk all over them. I feel sorry for photographers who's photographic ethics don't allow the ability to quickly touch up an image. They must spend so much more time searching for the a clean species to shoot before they even get into trying to caputre an interesting image.
steve
Hi Craig,
ReplyDeleteNice set of shots for the dragon flys. For me, I find the focus plane in image 4 cuts through the middle of the fly and a piece of the leaf, but leaves the eyes out of focus a bit weird. It's pretty tough with a shallow depth of field, so I'm left wondering about stacking?
I also find the bright flash spots on most of the images a bit distracting too. Not sure how best to eliminate that.
My favorite picture is probably image 3, but I'd still like to see it with a camera angle slightly further around to the left. Perhaps making the tail extend up to the right corner, and making the plant in the bottom left into a feature that the fly is looking at.
Cheers,
Geoff.