Small Mum

[Anita Bower]

I bought this Mum for flower photography course I'm taking. Small, 2 inches across.
Nikon D300, 185mm macro, f32, 4 sec., ISO 200, tripod, natural light, indoors.

[Steve Maxson]

This is a beautiful flower, well exposed, and I like the off-center comp. It's hard for me to judge critical sharpness on this borrowed laptop I'm using - typically, sharpness drops off noticeably at f/32. (I'll have to let others weigh in on that point. :S3:) This is very nice work!

[Ron Conlon]

Good choice of flower, it is livelier than most mums, and works well in high key. The high key is well handled. I vacillate on the off-center comp--one day I like it the next not.

[Diane Miller]

Very lovely! I like the way the edges of the petals disappear into the white BG. Off-center works for me here because the flower is pointing toward the UR.

If the D300 is a small (APS-C) sensor, you'll start getting softening from diffraction by f/11 or f/13. (More like f/14-16 with a full frame sensor.) The only way to know your limits (and in light of your earlier post about maybe not getting an accurate report of the aperture) is to try a series of different apertures and see which is sharpest. If you're handholding, it will take a statistical sample to tell -- shoot a bunch at each aperture and average the results. If using AF, I'd still average 6-10 shots, as AF can be variable in accuracy, even with the newest bodies.

[Jonathan Ashton]

Lovely shot, I would avoid small apertures like the plague but having said that there is a certain something about the soft edges. Personally I would use an aperture of f8 to f16 and move back a bit if you want more DOF.

[Anita Bower]

Jonathan and Diane: Thank you for your thoughts on getting sharpness. I do shoot the same shot at different apertures, and I move back to get more dof, then crop. I then look to see which image pleases me the most. I'm trying to compare images done this way to get a better sense of what I like.

[Anita Bower]

Good choice of flower, it is livelier than most mums, and works well in high key. The high key is well handled. I vacillate on the off-center comp--one day I like it the next not.
Thanks. I know what you mean about liking the position of the flower one day and not the next. :-)

[Anita Bower]

This is a beautiful flower, well exposed, and I like the off-center comp. It's hard for me to judge critical sharpness on this borrowed laptop I'm using - typically, sharpness drops off noticeably at f/32. (I'll have to let others weigh in on that point. :S3:) This is very nice work!
Thanks, Steve. I agree that laptops are not the best for judging quality of photos.

[Norm Dulak]

Hi Anita.

Like Jon and Steve, I would avoid stopping down my lens so much. But it's a nice image; TFS.