This is exciting posting my first picture to this site! I hope to learn a lot here. I shot this picture of a dragonfly back in August.
Olympus SP-550 UZ
f4.5 @ 1/320, ISO 100, -0.7 EV
Aperture priority mode
Processed in Photoshop CS2; cropped, curves adjustment, saturation increase, and noise reduction
A big welcome to the BPN family Christopher,
I like your composition, image and capture. This close up pose is very nice...you have razor sharp details and very good color rendition. The depth of field is good. I like the way your subject is framed...I don't know what the original image looked like, but I suspect that you could have framed this as a horizontal composition.
Please give us the type of lens used,focal length and if you used any extension tubes, or macro flash units...congratulation...its well presented...looking forward to your next capture...:cool:
What a great shot, shades of Angelina Jolie :D Fantastic shot made with a Digicam, my last camera before I switched to their SLR's . . . after using every optical ultra zoom they made up till the SP 550 UZ.
Hi - Welcome to the BPN Family - you will indeed enjoy it here.
Lovely first post - excellent colours and sharp detail - Like it a lot.
Gus - The SP-550UZ is a compact camera with a 20+ x zoom I believe - hence I would suggest this was just shot in Macro mode without any additional componentry required.
The point and shoots do handle Macro so very easily, I have often thought of getting one just for Macro stuff.
Hey Mr. Peters,
Thanks for bringing me up to speed on the point and shoots...I'm impressed...:eek: a 20x zoom with a macro mode?
Really nice...and I was thinking 20mm extension tubes and 180mm or 200mm focal length...:D:cool:
Gus -Point and shoots - IMHO for the price and results are better value than a SLR and all the required add on's for the casual macro user - the results that can be obtained from some of these (as seen above) is not half bad at all - They also have a greater DOF than a SLR - F8 on a compact is like F64 on a SLR.
:)
Yes, this was shot in macro mode. The SP-550UZ is an 18x zoom, and I find it takes some very nice macro photos. The one major downside is you have to get very close to your subject and even then you usually have to crop to get a closeup like this. I would really like a DSLR but can't afford one right now, so my SP-550UZ will have to do, not that I'm complaining :). I had entered this photo in the picture of the day contest on BestFoto and it won Best of the Macro Category for August.
Christopher - great image. I'm curious how you got close enough to get the shot. Is this a chilled dragonfly, a very lazy dragonfly, or ...?
Cheers and welcome aboard.
Gail
Gail,
I find that if I move the camera slowly, most dragonflies will just sit there and let me get quite close. I believe when I took this shot the front end of the lens was actually touching the dragonfly's wings. The only dragonflies I find very difficult to photograph are the the large darners because they're always flying!
Thanks again for all the nice comments!
Christopher
Hi Christopher, welcome to BPN with an excellent first post. Great detail and composition and excellent focus. Nice to know that I'm not the only non-DSLR user here! I would advise you to immediately go to your nearest photography store and buy a close-up or macro converter lens. They're very small and cheap lenses you directly screw on the lens, with great results! You can take pictures like this but without the need to crop. which will render much better detailed pictures without the amount of noise you notice here because of the cropping. I'm shooting with a Panasonic DMC-FZ18, which has about the same specs as your Olympus and I'm using a Suntec 4+ close-up or a brandless macro converter lens for this kind of work. Check out my images in the Macro forum to see some of the results you can get! I have also used a Hoya close-up lens with equally nice results. You should be able to pick one up for under $70,-. http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=22334 http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=21626 http://www.birdphotographers.net/for...ad.php?t=27255
I chose not to buy a DSLR because I do most of my shooting while out hiking. Now I pack the equivalent of a 28-500 zoomlens, macro lens and body in just one small bag, weighing about the same as a DSLR body without any lenses! Downside is that I can't photgraph above ISO100 because of all the noise.
Smile!
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