I Spit on Your Garbage!

[H4X1MA]

Ok, this is my first attempt at a macro. It was taken with a nikkor 55-300mm lense with a Ranox 250 strapped to the front. Let me tell you, this thing is hard to use! Or maybe I am just doing something wrong. It seems like my DOF is literally millimeters. If you look at the fly (regular size housefly) the eye's are in focus, some of the back is in focus, and there's a big blur spot right between the eyes. It seems like no matter what apeture I use I end up with random blur spots, and when looking through the viewfinder it's just complete randomness. if I'm doing something wrong could someone let me know >.<

 

[Overread16 4]

Big, bulbous insect eyes are a pain to work with indeed! And nothing wrong with the method as such, macro photography of this kind always has razor thin depth to it. Though out of interest what aperture were you using for the photo?

 

[H4X1MA]

f/18 ISO200 1/6 s @ 240mm

Maybe it's just because I am stacking it on the telephoto lens. I know that lens has a pretty crazy DOF to it already. I'm guessing that the 240mm might be the culprit, sometime this weekend I'll give it a shot on the 18mm and see what happens.

 

[H4X1MA]

Here's another that was zoomed to 100% then cropped. Some sharpening in post. Still the blur issue

f16 ISO200 1/8s @ 185mm

 

[Overread16 4]

1/6s is way way way too slow to handhold this kind of shot and its killing the quality. What you need to do is either add to your lighting or shoot from a stable tripod. Going the lighting rout if you build a custom snoot type adaptor and then have a hangover on the top to angle the light downward you can push enough light out of the popup flash to make a difference. You really want that shutter speed up to 1/200sec or so if you are handholding.

 

[H4X1MA]

They wern't handheld, that's why the blur is killing me. This was all on a tripod while this fly just sat there letting me snap pics for probably 5 minutes or so. As for lighting, that is going to be my next investment. I barely ever use flash for anything.

 

[kundalini]

[h=2]I Spit on Your Garbage![/h]

I fart in your general direction.

 

[dakkon76]

Even shake from you depressing the shutter release button can cause that much blur. Since a timer is out of the question here, you should consider a remote trigger. Aside from that... even though he appears to be still, he's probably not.

 

[Overread16 4]

For tripod work like that check your manual and enable mirror lock up - if you don't have a remote release also enable the delayed timer. When both are engaged pressing the shutter button fully with flip the mirror; there will then be a 2 second wait before the shutter fires (to lose vibrations from the mirror slap).

If you've a remote release you just enable the mirror lock up - one press of the shutter button flips the mirror and the second takes the shot.


The other source of softness could be diffraction from a small aperture selection; try a series of shots at 45 degress to a detailed surface and take shots at varying apertures and you should be able to see where diffraction starts to soften and also where your limits are (ie how small you cam make your aperture before the cost in image quality is too great.

 

[H4X1MA]

It's the lens. I tried some shots with my 18-55 today and the blur isn't nearly as bad, but also not zoomed in enough either. These were taken on a timer as well, but i didn't know about the mirror lockup. I'll look into that one.