I'm no Macro expert, although I own the lens you have used. I have not done much Macro for several reasons:
Very difficult to get sharp enough images hand-held; I often dont have patience for a tripod. Sometimes the subjects dont either.
Lighting is challenging, esp if you are hand-held and stopped down, to try to have more than razor-thin depth of field. Ringflash, off-camera flash is often used.
There is info on Macro resources at the top of the Macro Forum page.
1. Very good. Nice sharpness. You've been able to keep the plane of the lens close to that of the dragonfly. Compositionally, I think you need a bit more room at the top and could use less on the bottom. You might even recrop as a panroama style image.
2. Not enough in focus. Since you are working with very shallow DOF, I think you should try to get the head/eyes as the area of sharpest focus.
4. Pretty good. You have set the challenge for yourself very high, attempting to capture the length in focus. You might try more images from head back and not worry about the sharpness as you move away from the head.
6. Interesting. Needs some processing to increase contrast.
8. Getting there; closer to a more common Macro framing with eye(s) in focus.
I think you need to continue to work on capturing the insects head on or more symmetrically from above. Even with bug shots, "eye contact" is a real plus.
I like scott, found them a little soft. Also, since the eye draws the attention of the viewer, I found in most cases the eyes of the dragon flies were a little too close to the edge. I would have used the rule of thirds and tryed to put the eye on a grid intersection.
dalgin wrote:
Thanks alot for all your comments guys.
I am working on getting used to focusing to a very small area and holding the camera still. it is very hard
Yes, handheld macro/close-ups are really really tough .
One additional input I have is to come parallel to the body of the damsel to achieve the head to tail focus. It takes practice and sometime to master this.
