Yellow flowers at home ... CC please, and be brutal. :)

jedirunner · Feb 4, 2012

The "purple flowers" thread has the back story, so I'll skip it here.

Pics of yellow flowers. I'm having problems getting focus how I want it, and I know there are some composition and lighting issues as well (such it is with desk lamps behind white bed sheets).

Particularly perplexing in this set is that I could not for the life of me get my DOF from being too narrow. I pulled my aperture all the way down to f/32 and still couldn't get much wider DoF. Is it just a matter that I was too close, and therefore, the DoF was crazy shallow? (look at image 3 in particular ... the "tongue" and the bright thing in front of it -- I couldn't get them in focus at the same time). I'm thinking that I was too close to get the DoF to be wider (deeper? what's the correct term?)

Image 1.

Image 2.

Image 3.

Thanks for any tips, comments, suggestions, etc.

Kevin

punch · Feb 4, 2012

what lens are you using? i don't know where the purple flower thread is...

ETA: ok, i see the thread now. your lighting is better in this series, but i do wonder what focal length your lens is?

on my 100mm macro, getting in close closing down to f/11 or so leaves me with images that look like a typical f/1.8 photo... really, really narrow slice. if you're very close and your object has a lot of depth, which it does, it may just be a case of that.

Bitter Jeweler · Feb 4, 2012

http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...urple-flowers-home-c-c-brutal.html?highlight=

jedirunner · Feb 4, 2012

punch said:
what lens are you using? i don't know where the purple flower thread is...

These are all taken with the Canon 50mm macro lens.

Sorry, the "purple flowers" thread is in the same forum, but it's fallen several away from the top as new threads have started. I guess the key points from that (besides more needed CC) were the discussion that these were taken in the make-shift setup down in the daughters' bedroom with black fleece as a backdrop, and white bed sheets hung over the backs of kitchen chairs acting to diffuse the light coming out of $10 walmart desk lamps.

So yeah, lighting could use some major work in both equipment and utilization. (Haven't yet figured out how to work the 580EX II flash into these photos ... would love advice on how to work it in.)

Kevin

jedirunner · Feb 4, 2012

Bitter Jeweler said:
http://www.thephotoforum.com/forum/...urple-flowers-home-c-c-brutal.html?highlight=

Yes, thanks. I should have just linked to it to begin with.

Kevin

punch · Feb 4, 2012

here are some i took of the same subject, but with the longer focal length lens (i can only get it 0.31m to the subject).

1/10 (tripod), f/5.6, ISO 800, distance 0.39m

same exposure parameters but distance of 0.49m

the subject further away will lead to more in focus (although it's a small amount here)

and this one was right up on it.

jedirunner · Feb 4, 2012

punch said:
here are some i took of the same subject, but with the longer focal length lens (i can only get it 0.31m to the subject).

1/10 (tripod), f/5.6, ISO 800, distance 0.39m

same exposure parameters but distance of 0.49m

the subject further away will lead to more in focus (although it's a small amount here)

and this one was right up on it.

Thanks for the comments and examples. Sounds like it really was just a distance issue. I'll try taking more shots of them and keep that in mind. I didn't even think to change distance to change DoF ... so new to this that I only thought to adjust aperture/speed/iso, and forgot about distance.

Thanks!

Kevin