Methinks you still got a couple of focusing problems when you move up close to your subjects? And these are scanned prints, aren't they? Who did the scanning for you? Yourself on a flatbed scanner at home? That might account for the softness of the close-ups, too then... :scratch: Though I must say that I like the concept of the close-ups here, they quite nicely concentrate on one subject and are not too "cluttered" (haven't I used that same word in a comment to your other thread on the spider before?). In many cases (so I think), when you move up close to things, it is better not to have anything large in front of that intended subject with will get all blurred by a large aperture and later distract from the subject. So if there is another leave in front of the leave that you focus on, maybe flatten it or take it away much rather than leave it in the pic as a blurred blob. Just my thoughts.
I'm using a flatbed scanner at home so that might be the problem I think I'll have enough money after christmas to upgrade to a digital slr so it won't be aproblem in the furture.
I find that the older my flatbed scanner gets (that I still use here and there for I still shoot film every now and again despite the fact that I can use two different digital cameras, one compact version and a DSLR), the worse the quality of the scans becomes and I have to use quite a bit of Unsharp Mask (you also read the abbreviation USM on here) in Photoshop to bring the scans back to the print quality on my screen. Do you have Photoshop? Could you sharpen your scans after the scanning process just a bit? And bring the contrasts up to the contrasts on the prints? That would definitely help, too. Even before Christmas .
I have photosop CS2 so next time I'll play witht the sharpness of my photograph before putting them on the forum.
