Saturday, September 22, 2007

Macro: Yet another fly



Big Eyes

f/22, 1/60s, ISO 560, Diffused Flash, Tamron 90mm 1:1 Macro, D80

Not much to say here, expect that this is yet another fly I've managed to photograph. This is indeed becoming quite a good collection of insects.

I like how this turned out because it's quite rare to get a picture of the whole insect in focus. The Depth of Field (DOF) when taking macro shots is a matter of milimeters.

DOF refers to how much of the photo is in sharp focus. The rule is that the closer you are to a subject, the less of it is in focus. To get an entire insect in focus, you can do a few things.

The simple way is to use a narrower aperture (larger F-number). A narrower aperture puts more of the picture in focus, but increases the exposure time. Use at least f/8 - f/11 for your macro shots. In some cases, I've used f/64 !

Or you can get along the plane of the subject. What this really means is that you position your lens in such a way that it is at the same distance of the entire subject. That way, the whole subject is always within the same distance, thus its always in focus (or out of focus).

And from either my small garden of potted plants, or the few plants that grow along the fence in the backyard, this is turning out to be a pretty decent collection, I think.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Your house seems to attract loads of insects. Are you living in the jungle ?