Mike Moats inspired

[Susan Griffith]

With the camera sitting idol and a greenwing macaw molting it seemed like it was time to flex some macro muscles and see what could be done.

This is the underside of a wing coverlet feather which are mostly read, but you can see some green bleeding through from the other side. This feather is at an angle so there are some out of focus areas.

critiques/comments always welcome, after all there is still lots to learn with macro technique.:D

Canon 5D
ISO 800
Canon 180 macro
F32
10sec
Tripod
natural light through the window

[Julie Kenward]

Yes, this has Mike Moats written all over it - nice diagonal and your f-stop of 32 certainly looks about right! I do think the reds are a little bit hot on my monitor...maybe a slight reduction in saturation would pull them back a bit and give you less of a bleed between the individual strands of the feather.

Love the color and composition overall. It has a very nice 3-D look to it as well!

[Joseph Martines]

Very interesting composition ala Moats. I will have to remember to try that!

I'm trying to figure out how you could have gotten the upper left in focus more. Were you looking up into the feather??

What would have happened with a lower ISO??

Thanks for sharing.

[Mike Moats]

Hey Susan, Glad to have inspired you, I have alot of feather shots, they are great subjects with interesting patterns and colors. Are you sure you listed the right f/stop, as you should have gotten the whole image infocus at f/32. Good diagonal lines and colors.

[Susan Griffith]

Thanks for the comments :)

Joseph, If i lowered the ISO it would have increased the shutter speed by quite a bit, and the feather was tilted in the X, Y, and Z axis to get that effect. Playing with the different angles produces some very interesting illusions when making up close and personal images.

Mike, Yep it was at F/32. I think the different angles i was playing with pushed some of the regions of the feather out of focus. Today's feather experiments will be with some wing feathers that have a really interesting curve to them and flattening out the subject a little to see if i can get the whole plane in focus. I am actually playing with a tilt table to change the angles of the subject to create illusions of depth :D

I really love the bright macaw feathers with those deep saturations.

-Susan

[Mike Moats]

Lookng forward to seeing the mew feather shots