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A butterfly and a flower
- Thread starter jambaj0e
- Start date
Steve Pope
Well-known member
Botanical extreme close-ups and macros like this are critically dependent on pin-sharp focus, carefully manipulated depth of field, together with properly managed out-of-focus bokeh. It's quite a tricky aesthetic, in fact, and often requires using a tripod, macro lens and flash. Unfortunately, only the middle image in this series approaches sufficient all-round subject sharpness...while only the final image displays an acceptably unobtrusive background. Combining ALL the key elements in the one keeper image, while being ruthless with the near-misses, is the challenge.
Steve Pope
Well-known member
You don't mind the dominating flower foreground being slightly out of focus? Or the background elements still being recognizable? If those unsettling choices in the composition had been deliberate then there would be something to discuss - but they look accidental and arbitrary to me.
bpalme
Senior Member
Great subject. No 2 is best.
Agreed a little too much DOF is putting the subject out of focus.
Agreed a little too much DOF is putting the subject out of focus.
Steve Pope
Well-known member
Eh? There's NOT ENOUGH depth of field for the main subject plane - that's the problem.
Well, first of all, I think there are many different ways to deliver feedback on an internet forum, with varying levels of humbleness and politeness. In this case, I think the photo is nice overall, so, to balance your very critical and specific points, I thought I'd take a step back and call out the fact that I actually like the photograph despite its flaws.
To answer your questions, no, I don't mind the foreground as my eyes are immediately drawn to the butterfly. I don't have any "problems" with the background either. I don't find the composition "unsettling" either. Sure, if the photographer had reached just a bit closer to the subject, or used a faster lens, the background would have been more out of focus, if that's something that troubles the viewer, but I realize that this was probably a candid photo trying to cease the moment when the butterfly was standing like that. I know how hard it can be to catch them on photo before they take off, and most of the time there's no time to think too much about the background or foreground elements, unless you have a bit of luck and were standing there for hours with a tripod already pointing towards a dream composition.
So, with all things considered, I think it's a great photo. If I were a critic watching this photo at an art gallery, I probably would have sounded more like you, though, and at the end of the day, I wouldn't hang this photo up on the wall. (If I really had to, I probably would have post-processed it a bit to make it look better, e.g. adding vignetting, darkening the background to reduce its intensity, made the butterfly stand out even more, etc.)
Makes sense? It's all about different perspectives of the same thing. It's not a National Geographics photo, but it's nice for what it is.
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David Tenser
My camera equipment: http://djst.org/camera/
Aleo Veuliah
Forum Pro
Nice images, prefer the first
--
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
God always take the simplest way.
--
Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.
God is the tangential point between zero and infinity.
Imagination is more important than knowledge.
God always take the simplest way.
Haha, yes it was a very spur of the moment thing w/ the butterfly. I only managed to get a couple of shots before it flew away.
I think I could have gotten a better DOF background if I was at a different angle, as well as played around w/ the aperture more. I think that's one of the limiting things about using the LCD screen on the E-PL1 to fine-tune the DOF on a manual lens, especially. I'm planning to get an EVF soon.
Thanks for the comments, even some that sounded a little blunt. I do see what people mean by it and I would also love to get more background sharpness for the butterfly one, as well as the other ones. That's the hard thing about the Konica 57mm. Great DOF can be achieved, but it's narrow field
I think I could have gotten a better DOF background if I was at a different angle, as well as played around w/ the aperture more. I think that's one of the limiting things about using the LCD screen on the E-PL1 to fine-tune the DOF on a manual lens, especially. I'm planning to get an EVF soon.
Thanks for the comments, even some that sounded a little blunt. I do see what people mean by it and I would also love to get more background sharpness for the butterfly one, as well as the other ones. That's the hard thing about the Konica 57mm. Great DOF can be achieved, but it's narrow field
PhillipA
Veteran Member
The abbreviation D.O.F. (depth-of-field) for either background blur or "bokeh"
The sentence "I think I could have gotten a better DOF background if I was at a different angle" makes no sense. Neither does the sentence " Great DOF can be achieved, but it's narrow field"
I think you probably mean that you could have managed a more Out Of Focus background (therefore with a shallower Depth of Field ) if you had of moved closer or widened the len's aperture, or greater DOF if you had closed the aperture down a bit.
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Judge: ' This image may be better in black and white - perhaps even just black! '
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