Butterfly - please comment

[hank1105]

Took this yesterday. Please comment of this picture, I am new to this so constructive critism is perfectly fine. Thank you very much.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v150/hank1105/butterfly.jpg

[Molydood]

from a beginner:
crop looks a little too close to the left of the butterfly, the colours look nice, but the focus doesn't seem quite perfect, I think perhaps the wing is in focus, as is the front of the flower, but further towards the back of the shot the focus drifts off. You could argue that the depth of field is too small, or you could argue that the focus point needs to change. I think maybe just changing the aperture a little and increasing depth of field would have made the focus perfect, and finished the shot nicely.
cool shot though, I like it

[hank1105]

Thanks for the feedback. I also feel my focus and DOF was off. It was only my second time using my 70-200mm lens. That shot was at 200mm with Manual Focus, not sure on the EXIF info just yet. I didn't crop any of the photo that was exactly the shot I had via the viewfinder. I still have a long way to go, thanks again for your time.

Hank

[tofuboy]

Looks a little under exposed to me, nothing some levels or curves in PS won't fix though. Nice picture though :)

[lomond]

I tend to agree with both Molydood and Tofuboy on this, however if this is your second shot with this lens then all I can say is well done.

Some questions;

1 - Did you use a tripod or handheld.
2 - What shutter speed.
3 - Did you apply Unsharp Mask in PS.

All questions obviously linked to slightly soft focus.

Cameron

P.S. I have recently bought some extension tubes for macro work and realise how difficult it is to get good focus with such limited DOF.

[Jagman]

I've done a reasonable amount of insect photography, very often on flighty subjects like butterflies, and I understand the difficulties of small depth of field, I think you know what isn't right with your photo, so instead I'll offer some tips on the subject. Handholding with such a narrow depth of field is extremely difficult, but there are two immediate ways around it, one, is to take many many photos, and one of them will turn out to be perfect focus (which, I have found through trial and error, should be on the head or eye of the insect, if the rest of the body is slightly blurred, the photo still works, where as if a body part is sharp and the head blurred the averages of the photo working are much less.). The other method is to sit and watch a patch of flowers, although carefully, if that is a scotch thistle as it appears to be, and pick those that insects tend to choose first, then set up your camera on a tripod and focus on the centre of the flower, then sit back with a cable release and fire away whenever something lands, and work again on the law of averages, although you'll probably only need a quarter as many photos to get a good one.

[lomond]

The other method is to sit and watch a patch of flowers, although carefully, if that is a scotch thistle as it appears to be, .

It might be a Scottish thistle
but it's not a Scotch thistle.
Sorry, Scotch is a drink.
A nice drink, but still a drink.

The term Scotch doesn't go down well here unless you're refering to the water of life. :)

Cameron

[Jagman]

I was afraid that name might elicit that reaction, I call it that because the thistle, which was introduced into Australia, that has a flower head identical to the one in the photo, is known as scotch thistle, perhaps referring to it's origins, I haven't looked in the etymology of it.

I cast no aspersions on the Scottish regardless of the many,many, MANY times I've had to remove thorns from the scotch thistle from my hands when working with sheep. ;-)

[hank1105]

Lomond: the photo was taken handheld, I don't have the shutter speed handy right now, and I did not apply unsharp mask in PS - I am noob with PS also.

What I found interesting is when I had my lens on AF, the focus was all screwed up, most likely do to bracketing or focal point. So I switched it to MF and it appeared in focus, BUT it was a windy day and a little tricky getting the butterfly, on the flower all in focus. To say the least, I have a greater appreciation for macro photographers when they have to get insects or anything that moves. I took about 15 photographs of this butterfly, I have a few with a bee and a butterfly, but only the butterfly is in focus, really ticked me off. I thought I had some good shots. In fact my whole day Saturday, most of my shots were out of focus, most were taken in poor lighting with manual focus. Like I said I really have to get used to this lens, especially at 200mm on such a close subject or in some cases a subject far away.

Thank you for the tips Jagman.

[smudge]

Jagman, I think the objection is in the misuse of SCOTCH in reference to and as a prefix for anything Scottish related. For example ScotchMan.
It happens everywhere. I learned this lesson during my spell as an Englishman serving in a SCOTS Regiment.
The prefix if one must be used is Scots. not SCOTCH. Scots-man,
Scots-thistle or whatever else you feel requires the honour of a Scottish prefix.
It was a source of constant amusement to me to see just how annoyed this made my colleagues. :wink:

[tofuboy]

Lomond: the photo was taken handheld, I don't have the shutter speed handy right now, and I did not apply unsharp mask in PS - I am noob with PS also.


did some levels and some curves and applied UnSharp Mask (150%, 1.0px, 0 threshhold) and faded it to 70% (edit -> fade unsharp mask). I'm learning PS as well so I'm sure there are better settings to use, but it's a start. I included in the picture the levels and curves dialog so you can see what I did. Also, there isn't a right amount of sharpening or contrast to be added to a picture... it all depends on personal taste. So what I did may be 'right' for me, but not for you or someone else :) Hope that helps...

http://www.tofuboy.net/upload/guest/butterfly.jpg

[lomond]

Tofuboy, nice job.
I like the inclusion of the dialogue boxes for levels and curves.

Cameron

[hank1105]

tofuboy - cool stuff, I need a 101 guide to PS, also need to learn how to use the histogram. Picture looks better after you touched it up. Thanks for taking the time in working with it.

[tofuboy]

I find that I'm usually just doing a few levels and curves adjustments to my images to get something I like... with some USM as well.

here are a few ps tutorials to get you started that I found useful...
http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/instant_photoshop.shtml
http://luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/command_primer.shtml

[hank1105]

Thanks tofuboy. I always hear mention of USM, what does that stand for and what does it do?

Hank