Cup Mum

[Anita Bower]

Taken indoors in the conservatory of Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania, USA. Morning. November 4, 2008.
Konica Minolta 5D
100mm macro lens, Minolta
tripod
natural light, no flash
ISO 100, 1/30, f 11
Unsure of white balance, probably automatic
spot metering
manual exposure
manual focus
Post processing: PS7

Anita Bower

[Julie Kenward]

Anita, I had to look at this twice to see why the red petals seemed so OOF. My guess is that even with a tripod, the 1/30th of a second exposure time was a little too slow. You used ISO 100 so it would have been possible to use ISO 400 and bumped that shutter speed up a couple of notches and really frozen the flower in its place.

I very much like your composition, though. You've pulled my attention towards that one little out of place petal very nicely and I like it. Next time, stop down a bit more in aperture and speed and see if you don't get a crisper image.

[Anita Bower]

Thanks, Jules. What you write makes sense. I will do what you suggest. It is absolutely fabulous to get this type of honest and specific feedback!! Thank you!

[Anita Bower]

Actually, Jules, as I think about it more, I'm a bit confused as to why the slow shutter speed would cause the OOF problem. I was indoors, without breeze.
I do understand about stepping up the aperture. Probably needed higher aperture number to create a larger/deeper dof.
Could it be possible that I didn't focus well? Maybe I focused to far back, in the center, ignoring the red petals that were a bit further forward.
Anita

[Julie Kenward]

Anita, if your hand hit the shutter (you didn't say you used a cable release so I am assuming it did) then even with a tripod you could possibly have caused a small amount of camera shake. At 1/30th, it's possible that this cause the OOF area.

Now that I give it another look I do see that nothing is extra sharp so I think it could be a matter of not focusing properly instead of the shutter speed. Any time I see 1/30th or lower I figure it has a chance to be the culprit!

[Anita Bower]

I didn't use cable release. Instead, I used the 2 second delay for the shutter. My tripod is lightweight, so, perhaps the 2 second delay isn't long enough to stop any vibration in the tripod. I'll try the cable release this week, as well as trying higher ISO speeds and apertures.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Anita, It does look soft on the focus in some parts, and I would have used a higher f-stop number to add more focus though out. I don't think the problem was movement because the whole image would be soft, but the very center of the flower and the little bent pedal on my screen look fairlysharp. I don't like to carry extra equipment so I use my self timer rather than a cable release. I set mine delay at five seconds, and have never had a problem with soft images using this system.

[Anita Bower]

Thanks, Mike. The only choices for delaying shutter release on my camera are 2 and 10 seconds. Correct focusing is an issue for me. I don't always see as clearly as I might. I will try a smaller f stop, as well as different focus points.