First Try with 100mm Macro Lens

C & C please - still bungling my way thru macro ...

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nice shot

Yeah, really nice; super sharp! Only C&C I would have would be that if you're trying to show the flies, you might want to lighten it up a bit, but of course that might tend to blow out the petals. I guess you could crop them out if they get too blown out.

thanks guys - here are a few more of the same pair and 1 from a loner ...

I am newbie to macro - have dabbled extensively in sport ... but gotta say - love this macro stuff

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and one more ...

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Good ones.
Assume these were taken in strong sun ? - this does tend to give high contrast shots.
Brian v.

Very nice. I do believe that my first subjects for my Canon 100mm Macro were Common Green Bottle Flies (Lucilia sericata), too.

Cool looking snail in the second pic, too.

Here's one of my first macros. Yours look really good. My flies wouldn't sit still very long.

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Nice shots. I'm new to Macro myself, rented a Canon 100MM 2.8 for a few days and I have a folder full of images to play with now.. I didn't want to give the lens back !

scubadaddy wrote in post #10980263
Nice shots. I'm new to Macro myself, rented a Canon 100MM 2.8 for a few days and I have a folder full of images to play with now.. I didn't want to give the lens back !

Thanks ... <tip> if you do decide to purchase this lens ... I found that a cross-border shopping trip saved me $300 - $400 CAD
also - I have used this lens in portraits - sharp and great bokeh - so, for me - it was a good buy...

I'm wondering if you're getting softness due to diffraction at f32, I usually try to sacrifice a bit of depth of field for a sharper image. Maybe try shooting at f16 and stacking a few images together? With a larger apperture you would be able to increase your shutter speed as well and would make handheld shots much easier.

philmony wrote in post #10980450
Thanks ... <tip> if you do decide to purchase this lens ... I found that a cross-border shopping trip saved me $300 - $400 CAD
also - I have used this lens in portraits - sharp and great bokeh - so, for me - it was a good buy...

Thanks! I do see a significant price gap on each side of the border. I wish I had more time to play with the lens, the winds were 20-30 km/h outside for the entire time I had the lens so it was hard to get some steady images of the critters in my yard.

I agree with Tune Time - ISO 800 f32 at 1/90
At f32 you are well into there area where diffraction softening is going to make a major difference to the quality of shots you get and not matter how well you shoot you won't get that sharpness back.
Further using a small aperture like that has pushed you to use a higher ISO which further degrades overall quality and a risky slower shutter speed; fine for handholding with the IS lens, but slow with regard to subject motions.

I generally find f13 to be about the limit where I work with a 1.6 crop camera body, sometimes shifting into f16, but its very rare. In general softening starts to happen with most lenses (through diffraction) after around f8-f10, but up till around f13 (on 1.6 crop bodies) you still get good results - after that things drop off.

You are far better suited to learning to work with f13, a slightly lower ISO and a faster shutter speed (I almost always use flash so I can use ISO 100 and 1/200sec without worries about lighting) - doing so whilst learning good focusing methods will give you a much better quality of shot.

Overread wrote in post #10982325
I agree with Tune Time - ISO 800 f32 at 1/90
At f32 you are well into there area where diffraction softening is going to make a major difference to the quality of shots you get and not matter how well you shoot you won't get that sharpness back.
Further using a small aperture like that has pushed you to use a higher ISO which further degrades overall quality and a risky slower shutter speed; fine for handholding with the IS lens, but slow with regard to subject motions.

I generally find f13 to be about the limit where I work with a 1.6 crop camera body, sometimes shifting into f16, but its very rare. In general softening starts to happen with most lenses (through diffraction) after around f8-f10, but up till around f13 (on 1.6 crop bodies) you still get good results - after that things drop off.

You are far better suited to learning to work with f13, a slightly lower ISO and a faster shutter speed (I almost always use flash so I can use ISO 100 and 1/200sec without worries about lighting) - doing so whilst learning good focusing methods will give you a much better quality of shot.

thank you - i will heed your advice at my next opportunity (which doesn't happen too often at this time of year in 'sunny' Vancouver )

I agree with Overread on the ISO and F stop.

I've been using F11 as the maximum recently (occassional F13 and F16). ISO 400. Many shots I've recently taken are much more wide open eg F5 F8 etc.

I've found that using the higher ISO has allowed me to do away with flash in many cases with the 100mm, and when required only a small fill burst (1/64 power) is required, to give more natural background colours, rather than the black (tho that works in some cases).

Hope you get another chance soon to play.