Wow Ed, u r rocking with ur new lens - such a lovely BG this is...
U had ample light - why did'nt u stop down a bit more to have the whole of the butterfly in DOF...?
Head, body & lower parts of the wings look pretty soft.
Love the comp and light, Ed. First thing after that I saw was the softness on part of the butterfly, and looking at your techs I thought a bump to iso400 and stopping down to f11 would have done a great job on extending DOF.
Then I scrolled down and saw Kaushik's post. Guess that means I'm in agreement with him. ;)
Thanks Kaushik. Thanks Steve. As always, I appreciate your critiques.
I do most of images of flowers and such stopped down pretty far (f/16 or such). As Jules can tell you, I am always saying "more dof, more dof".
On this particular day, I was determined to open things up quite a bit. All my images that day (see "A Study in Scarlet" and 'Coneflower" for other examples) were made between f/2.8 and f/8. So the reason I didn't stop down is because I didn't want to. :) I wanted to work soft.
That said, the issue becomes does it work? And what I am hearing so far is maybe not!
It doesn't work for me, Ed, the way it is. If I'm going to make a statement in shallow DOF, I usually make it very tightly. Here, because you've got the whole butterfly and some blossoms, I want to see the whole butterfly sharp.
That is simply the way I look at it, and the fact that it doesn't work as well as possible for me should not sway you or your vision in any way.
Hi Steve, nice composition but I am afraid the first thing that struck me was where do I focus? The Monarch is half in half out, if deliberately making DOF limited then I would have tried to focus on the head/eye region, that way I would stop my eye roving around the image.
Jon
Agree with u Ed. Am not against shallow DOF experiments either. And wud chime in with what Jon mentioned - keeping the head region in the shallow DOF region. This might have also created a radiating blurred out wings as we move outwards from the head/body region which "might" have looked better...
Once again, good points. And I will be sure to keep them in mind. I guess there are a couple things I've learned here. First off, I was so enamored with the composition that I overlooked some of the dof shortcomings. This despite the fact that I purposely shot wide open with limited dof. And second, I am always, always better off using a tripod. This image was made handheld and while I targeted the head as the focal point, I obviously missed.
What's the old saying... "Do as I say not as I do." These are things that I often comment on in other people's images. Then I ignore them in mine. Yikes!!!