[PIC_THREAD] Macro

These little critters are everywhere.
Big orb Web spiders

I say one catch a crane fly today
It came down from its cover, attacked, packaged up, then took it home.

Didn't have my macro lens on my camera so missed it.

I need to keep that lens on by default!
 
Not the best photo in the world but it's all I managed to get of these things. I saw a few flitting about when I was in Canada this summer in my parent's garden and this was the only one I managed to get close to.

Funky looking things but I've got no idea what it is lol

*edit* was provided with an ID on TalkPhotography -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelecinus

Mystery Beast by Phal44, on Flickr
 
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A few more shots from my shots I've yet to process from my holiday lol :/

A funky colourful little fly is the first. These seemed to be quite common and were rather superbly colourful but were quite small :(

The second shot is a fly I found dead somewhere. The weird stuff around it's body is what intrigued me!

The last is a weird little Moth I found. I found it's little nose quite cute :D



1-Fabulous Fly by Phal44, on Flickr

2-Poser by Phal44, on Flickr

3-Hedgehogface by Phal44, on Flickr
 
I had a look through the shots to see if I had anymore of these little shiny fly things and found a few more. This is two shots that I've used to make one to practise some Photoshop stuff! One shot had the body reasonably in focus whereas the other had better detail on the eye so I cut the eye off one and used it on the other. A manual focus stack almost :)




Not as much colour as the other but the light is a bit different and the angle is also less suitable to see the shiny body but I kinda like it anyway.




Fabulous Fly 2 by Phal44, on Flickr
 
gjc10212 said:
Some nice macros, but a few are not particularly sharp and the dof is too thin. Would be nice to see the entire spider in the focal plane.
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Do you do much Macro work? :P Even if you have an external flash, it's still very hard to get a big enough dof to get everything in.

100mm at 30cm doesn't give you much dof even at F16 so you'll only use that aperture with a flash. Without a flash, even in decent sunlight you'll be lucky to be able to use F11 without silly high ISOs

Dead or stationary subjects can be focus stacked but that can be tricky to do right.
 
My dragonfly is a handheld stack of two pictures and still the dof is only thin enough to capture the body
Like phal said. Even at narrow apertures dof is tiny. I've ended up with dof way less than an mm before with tubes + macro lens

I personally prefer a really high detail with lack of dof to the alternative
 
Aside from Aperture and focus stacking, is there any other way to get a bigger dof?

I've just got my little 60mm oly macro lens. Definitely improved since I started, but I'm still having some problems with the extremely shallow dof.
 
Aedus said:
Aside from Aperture and focus stacking, is there any other way to get a bigger dof?

I've just got my little 60mm oly macro lens. Definitely improved since I started, but I'm still having some problems with the extremely shallow dof.
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Can't say I'm aware of any! It's just physics unfortunately. Better lenses and higher MP camera sensors mean you can shoot from a bit further away and crop in so you get a bit more DOF but there's only so much you can do with that. You just need to try to line up the shots to make the most of what you have.

Ultimately if you want to maximise your DOF then you'll need a good flash that's well diffused and you'll need some small apertures.
 
Phal said:
Can't say I'm aware of any! It's just physics unfortunately. Better lenses and higher MP camera sensors mean you can shoot from a bit further away and crop in so you get a bit more DOF but there's only so much you can do with that. You just need to try to line up the shots to make the most of what you have.

Ultimately if you want to maximise your DOF then you'll need a good flash that's well diffused and you'll need some small apertures.
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Yeah i'll give it a try, I was using a home made flash bouncer, may have to invest in a diffuser. With the jumping spider my room is so extremely dark my flash wasn't going to get me as small of an aperture as I would have hoped, I believe that was on f7? Around about that, and it was still pretty dark.

I think I need to maybe raise the ISO a bit, that was shot with 200 ISO, is there a rule of thumb for macro that you shouldn't go over a certain ISO? Like 600-800?
 
Aedus said:
Yeah i'll give it a try, I was using a home made flash bouncer, may have to invest in a diffuser. With the jumping spider my room is so extremely dark my flash wasn't going to get me as small of an aperture as I would have hoped, I believe that was on f7? Around about that, and it was still pretty dark.

I think I need to maybe raise the ISO a bit, that was shot with 200 ISO, is there a rule of thumb for macro that you shouldn't go over a certain ISO? Like 600-800?
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Use the lowest you can afford to I guess but that's a rule I use for all my photography. Obviously if there's any kind of movement then you need exposures short enough to freeze the subject but other than that I use whatever exposures that give me the lowest ISO.

As far as diffusers, a lot of people seem to get a bit Blue Peters about it and start making stuff themselves and get very good results with them. One example

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sjjl_heLrjM
 
Agree with the above comments, when you're shooting 1:1 or beyond the depth of field is so narrow even at high apertures You're not going to get much of an improvement.

I remember a few years ago when I was heavily into macro work I was using 3 extension tubes and a x2 converter to get around 4.5:1 magnification and the DOF must have been half a mm.

The only way to improve DOF is by image stacking which is fine if you're shooting still life but near impossible with any thing else.

The best thing to concentrate on is composition, If the shot is composed well ultimately a narrow DOF won't detract from the photo.

As for lighting, again I was shooting mostly insects and would use a combination of extension tubes, times converters and filters all with flash as I needed high shutter speeds as I was shooting free hand, I went through many DIY diffusers.

cereal boxes lined with tin foil and defused by grease proof paper was always a favorite of mine.

Eventually I made a custom bracket for my camera which could hold two flash guns close to the lens and had two DIY diffuers.

It was a pretty funky set up, I must have looked crazy carrying that lot around chasing flies :)

This was one of my first attempts at a diffuers, unfortunately I don't have any pictures of my final set up.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dan-porrett/3474290132/

and some of my favorite macro's can be found here. I've not really touched the camera in a couple of years, really want to get back into it but its just finding the time, this thread is giving me some motivation so keep the pics coming!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/dan-porrett/with/3474290132/
 
Your macro shots are amazing, the composition of them is really gorgeous in some of them.

I've only started recently and still have plenty to learn :D Diffuser will be purchased soon, though bounce flash isn't too shabby.
 
famas said:
As for lighting, again I was shooting mostly insects and would use a combination of extension tubes, times converters and filters all with flash as I needed high shutter speeds as I was shooting free hand, I went through many DIY diffusers.

cereal boxes lined with tin foil and defused by grease proof paper was always a favorite of mine.

Eventually I made a custom bracket for my camera which could hold two flash guns close to the lens and had two DIY diffuers.

It was a pretty funky set up, I must have looked crazy carrying that lot around chasing flies :)
Click to expand...

This looks quite funky but not sure it's even being produced yet lol

http://www.flash-adapter.com/index.html
 
Aedus said:
I'd feel like enough of a knob running around after bugs with a normal flash diffuser, let alone something that looks like a spaceship.
Click to expand...

Tbh if you see any macro guys they'll have some weird flash arrangement for maximum well diffused light.

More light = smaller aperture which gives you better DOF. The problem is getting light that doesn't create massive blown out parts on the insect where it's shiny and this is where the big diffusers come in.

People come up with allsorts of DIY fixes for this :) Look at what Famas said, he had two flashes with home made diffusers bolted on lol... Do you think that looked normal? :D
 
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