Single rose amidst many - C&C please

[aia21]

Hi,

This is my first photo I am posting on POTN (or any other forum for that matter). :D

C&C would be very much appreciated! (There is no need to be gentle.)

Exif is intact but in short it is shot with Canon 40D, 17-55mm f/2.8 IS USM lens and the settings are:

manual mode
55mm
f/2.8
1/160
ISO 400
no flash (lighting courtesy of the ceiling lighting in our kitchen)
only very slight P&P in Lightroom, pretty much straight off the camera


http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/photos/forums/IMG_0528.jpg (http://www-uxsup.csx.cam.ac.uk/~aia21/photos/forums/IMG_0528_large.jpg)
(Click on photo to see full size - note that it is 5MiB in size!)

Thanks a lot in advance for your comments!

Best regards,

Anton

[chauncey]

You said not much PP? The image seems soft.

[PETERSYMES]

IT's a nice picture,and the colour of the background compliments the rose well.
For me the DOF is a little too shallow there is not quite enough of the flower in focus to grab the eye.
Tha strong shadows (from the overhead lamp) are distracting, could use a bit of fill flash and i notice a colour shift to orange in the middle (on this monitor anyway)

As said it is a nice composition just needs slightly different lighting to make the colour punch and sharper focus to get the silky texture on the petals.

[aia21]

chauncey: Yes, that is because the DOF is so shallow. According to the Online Depth of Field Calculator (http://www.dofmaster.com/dofjs.html) my settings and subject distance mean that I had a DOF of 0.37cm which really is not a lot so only a tiny slice through the rose can be in focus at any one time.

PETERSYMES: That's very helpful, thanks! I was going for the largest aperture to maximize on the bokeh but I think I have to agree with you that I have gone overboard hence the lack of focus in the majority of the rose. I will try with a smaller aperture to increase DOF and use my 580EX II as a fill-in flash next time an opportunity arises to take similar shots. Not sure about the orange shift in the middle, perhaps the fill-in flash will help with that, too?

Thanks a lot for the comments!

Best regards,

Anton