Flower for C&C please

PoleStar · 22-10-2007 8:12pm #1

Hi noobie looking for advice and C&C.

Below taken with eos 400d, 18-55 mm kit lens at 18mm, f4.5 and 1/80.
Thanks for comments!

Also, the flower aint as crisp as I would like. i used autofocus and manual settings. Is this due to my settings you think or is it just one of the problems with the kit lens.

PS no post processing applied yet!

elven · 22-10-2007 8:43pm

At 1/80th the blur is likely to be down to shake. However, it also looks like your focus was slightly off since there's a leaf that looks quite sharp in the lower right there. I think the plane of focus was probably a couple of cm further away than the front of the flower, so your near petals are more fuzzy than the rest. With flwoer stuff and shallow DoF I always shoot a few because I know fine at least half will have the point of focus in the wrong place...

The orange on the green background is nice and bright, makes it stand out. It's not necessarily a bad idea to centre the subject, but did you do it on purpose, or did you just not think about the framing? Worth stopping to consider. Sometimes, a centred composition can look great with a square crop because then you've got even space on all sides, to emphasise it.

If you're considering any new lenses, the 50mm f1.8 is the cheapest and handiest thing to have, and you can use it for this stuff at a wide aperture to throw the background out of focus even more. If you get extension tubes, you can also get in really close and start exploring the shapes of petals and stuff like that - it's a nice cheap way to get into macro.

Did you take any others that might have the focus on the petals?

PoleStar · 22-10-2007 8:55pm

Unfortunately that was the best of them!

Thought I had the focus centered rightly altho maybe then autofocus let me down.

Cropping was as planned, although any opinions welcomed!

Carrigman · 22-10-2007 9:16pm

Don't blame the kit lens. The image is soft due to a combination of camera shake and the focus being slightly off, as Elven said. I would have used a much smaller aperture - f/8 or f/11 - and this would entail a much slower speed so a tripod would be necessary. (Invest in one if you haven't one already. It will make a profound difference to the quality of your photography). I would have also gone in closer. I second Elven's comments on the 50mm f/1.8. It is ridiculously cheap for such a cracker of a lens.

elven · 22-10-2007 9:21pm

At f8 or f11 wouldn't those pink fuschias in the background be a bit too overpowering?

Carrigman · 22-10-2007 9:27pm

That's why I would have gone in closer Elven - to eliminate background distractions.

elven · 22-10-2007 9:32pm

Aaaaaaah.

PoleStar · 23-10-2007 10:14pm

This may be a stupid question but I thought 1/focal length was safe for handheld to avoid shake, so the slowest at 18mm should be 1/18, therefore 1/80 should be fast enough at 18mm focal length to avoid shake no?

Thirdfox · 23-10-2007 10:21pm

on the digital format a lot of sensors are cropped - your Canon has a 1.6x cropping factor meaning that 18mm is actually 28.8mm (in 35mm terms) so 1/30sec would be safe for a stationary target on good footing.

Maybe on the day the wind was blowing? In which case multiple x2
Maybe you weren't standing in a good posture? Crouching etc. would make you less stable. But 1/80sec should be good enough in most cases.

Just to let you know, Canon have dSLRs that crop at 1.6x, 1.3x and 1x factor. Nikon have 1.5x and 1x crop factor cams and Olympus uses 2x crop factor dSLRs. So a 100mm lens may be 200mm, 150mm, 160mm, 130mm or 100mm depending on what camera you use.

Flower for C&C please

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