Too bad about the camera shake

Ron Evers · Oct 2, 2010

As some of you know, I shoot manual lenses & sometimes this leads to less than ideal shots. I was in a very awkward position to try this shot & could not steady myself/camera well enough. This is the best of three attempts.

Minolta Celtic 50/3.5 macro.

Kimba · Oct 2, 2010

love the idea but yes, bummer about the shake.

jackiejay · Oct 2, 2010

wow shake or not still a good shot

enzodm · Oct 3, 2010

Spider body seems ok, perhaps is matter of DoF (me too shooting manual, with lenses typically faster than zooms, and more prone to out of focus due to shallow DoF).

Ron Evers · Oct 3, 2010

Shallow DOF aside, if it were not for the shake the hairs on the spider would be sharp. Compounding the problem was a slow shutter (1/25s) due to poor light.

Thanks for your comments folks.

Phranquey · Oct 3, 2010

Ron Evers said:
Shallow DOF aside, if it were not for the shake the hairs on the spider would be sharp.

At f/3.5, your DOF is razor thin... literally a few mm's. Just simply taking a breath will knock you way out of focus.
Look at the hairs on the spider's abdomen & on the fly's back and head, they're fairly sharp.
Considering awkard positioning while handheld and f/3.5 with a 50mm macro at 1/25th, you really couldn't have had the planets more aligned against you.... I think you did pretty damn good.

Ron Evers · Oct 3, 2010

Phranquey said:
At f/3.5, your DOF is razor thin... literally a few mm's. Just simply taking a breath will knock you way out of focus.
Look at the hairs on the spider's abdomen & on the fly's back and head, they're fairly sharp.
Considering awkard positioning while handheld and f/3.5 with a 50mm macro at 1/25th, you really couldn't have had the planets more aligned against you.... I think you did pretty damn good.

Thanks for your complimentary comment but I shot @ f4 to gain a little DOF but could not stop down any further with the light. In retrospect I could have bumped up the ISO as I was shooting @ 200.