Yellow butterfly with Digital Rebel

[The Photo Tuell]

http://www.pbase.com/image/21491582/large.jpg

Handheld with 420EX flash, 50 F/1.8 lens at F/3.2 for 1/200th second, ISO 100. Parameter 2 like always, and no sharpening or USM.

Full size here: http://www.pbase.com/image/21491582/original

[xxlt]

The Photo Tuell~~Hello!
I like your photo :) So often we only see the top of the
butterfly, but here we see the belly. Very original and the colors are wonderful.

bill from Ohio w/D300

[Mark Kemp]

Good pic - well done and no camera shake on a handheld either.

In this case a little USM should make a good picture better.

The body of the butterfly is really sharp and detailed, but the sharpness falls off on the wings because of the big aperture.

Natural history shots like this are all about the creature and the clearer it looks the better (nearly always)

If USM makes the body too sharp you need to make two layers -one slightly oversharp and one normal. Put the normal layer on top and add a layer mask. Then paint on the layer mask to show the sharp layer below only where it is needed, especially along defined lines like the edges of the wings

[jim monroe]

Like the shot a lot and the detail and sharpness of the body when looking at the full image is great.
As mentioned the depth of field here is really quite small and much of the butterfly's wings is a bit blurred.
According to a note above this could be fixed in post processing but I would really like to see how much. Certainly with my knowledge of Photoshop it could be improved but again I don't think by a lot.
My question for the more knowledgeable than me out there, I'm pretty much a newcomer to photography, is: could the original photo been helped greatly by upping the ISO to say 400 thereby allowing for a smaller aperature with the same shutter speed and hence increasing the depth of field? Would the gain in the depth of field with this kind of adjustment in the ISO be significant?

[Conk]

I like it.
As said about sharpening and how it falls off on the wings, I would just like to add that for the amount that the focus falls off on the wings there is no amount of sharpening to correct this and still have a a photo beyond the quality that there already is.
A touch of brightness may help but not really necessary.
Great job, great photo PT.

[The Photo Tuell]

Thanks all. Yea maybe ISO 400 or 800 with aperture at F/5.6 or F/8 would have probably gotten the whole thing in focus.

For not being a macro lens I'm pretty happy with the detail in the eyes and antenna/proboscis. It took a few shots to get this one with focus in the right spot, no hand shake, etc, so at the time I wasn't worried about getting the whole thing sharp.

Next time I'll go for the 'natural history' or realistic look instead of the artistic blurred edges. Still getting used to actually having control over DOF (and ISO). :)

[Mark Kemp]

Conk wrote:
I like it.
As said about sharpening and how it falls off on the wings, I would just like to add that for the amount that the focus falls off on the wings there is no amount of sharpening to correct this and still have a a photo beyond the quality that there already is.
.


Yep - Conk you are right - I gave it a quick go and the wings don't come back far enough before it is obviously over sharpened. The two layers trick helps a bit, but its still not enough.

It is always best to do it right in the camera than try to fix it afterwards.

[RedShoesGirl]

Mabye it's my monitor here at work, but the colour looks way off to me. There is no clear black and white, the levels are just too low and the butterfly isn't yellow. I pulled the shot off and just added a bit of levels and the difference is remarkable. Try that. This is really a nice shot that deserves to be worked on.

RSG

[CyberDyneSystems]

I think it is a great shot,. but I agree that some tweeking would do wonders. In PS try "levels" and maybe tweek with color balance and saturation. (carefull now,. don't take things too far)