First photo for C&C

krbkev

Hi all, I was practising depth of field and the spider appeared from nowhere. I have no post processing skills yet so any advice is welcome.

AnCatDubh

I posted your image inline as may be a little lazy in these parts to click the link :rolleyes:

There's a link in the FAQ about how to post images inline on a thread if you are interested.

Re: Your post - Can you post a little bit about what you were trying to achieve and how you approached it?

For example, were you shooting with a macro lens, standard kit lens, what aperture did you select and why?

Just it might assist in providing a few pointers to you.

I'll come back in tomorrow with some comment on the image itself.

krbkev

Thanks for the reply. I used a canon eos 400d, EF 75-300mm lens. I took the photo in manual mode - settings f/5.6, shutter speed 1/1000 sec., ISO 200 and focal length 300mm. I used these settings as I had heard that using the long focal length would help achieve shaloow depth of field along with the f stop value. Shutter speed was purely decided upon from the 'correct' exposure guide in camera.

Ghost Train

focus looks a bit off to me, just the picture looks soft, would expect the leaf to be sharper (the picture is quite small so hard to tell exactly)... other than that it looks fine, nice contrast to the picture. Maybe if the focus was sharper on the spider or you got in a bit closer it might make for a better shot.

AnCatDubh

The following is just my opinion so feel free to think that i'm completely wrong and have missed the point

Your rationale serves you well to be honest. One of the more significant ways in which to achieve shallow depth of field is increase the focal length, that plus distance to subject - yes aperture is important too but as you can see from your own image at 300mm and whatever your distance to subject (relatively close I'm assuming for that focal length), you do get quite extreme bokeh and incredible narrow depth of field - this almost becomes a difficulty in that it can be too narrow too and a resulting difficulty in achieving a clear focus - possibly due to the incredibly shallow depth of field and possibly due to camera shake / motion blur at that focal length. This may be what Ghost Train is referring to.

The image itself I think isn't a spectacular image but it has achieved what you set out to achieve. I don't know that there is a spectacular image in there to be had so it may be that the scene is more a practice scene than a 'hang on the wall scene'. To try something in addition to what you've done here, I'd suggest to get closer again if the min focus distance allows it and go higher on the aperture - sometimes you need to completely obscure the background as you've done in the sample shot but sometimes it can be nicer to see a little detail still in the oof bokeh region but not quite as blurred. Getting in closer will serve to isolate your intended subject.

keps

Just to add.

The composition of this photo is very good.

However there is no part of the photo in focus as far as I can make out.

You must havve been aiming for a very narrow area of focus- or maybe not using a tripod at low speed(shake).


No amount of after work will really rectify a shot which is out of focus - so remember - getting what you want to get in focus as you shoot is important.

regards

keps

keps

Sorry - I omitted to read your response to ACD's question.

When you say 'manual' - were you also on manual focus- or did you allow auto-focus to remain?


I guess auto focus was in play -so therefore the problem is 'shake' .

Even at 1000th second at 300mm - it is common to get a small degree of 'shake(unless you are lucky enough to own a VR lens) .

Tripod needed.

Fionn

It's hard to tell if the image is suffering from poor focus or camera shake or perhaps both.

unfortunately the IQ of this lens is pretty poor by any standards, the problem arises from a few things i think
First - is not enough light! increase the ISO
Second eliminate shake more light and use a tripod
Third - stopping down - increase the F stop while increasing the DOF it will need more light - maybe flash?
At 300mm handholding will need lots of light
so go back and try some of the suggestions and see what can be achieved from those.
good luck