Early macro shots - opinions pls

[adic88]

Here are some early shots, with the kit lense that came with the camera, EFS 18-55mm. The shots were taken with a flash diffuser, 400ISO, f5.6, 0.5-0.4s.

Honest opinions please, help me improve.

[adic88]

Next plan is to either buy a Speedlight 430 or to buy a 100mm macro lense (besides cigar macros, i'll be taking a lot of portraits).

Which do you feel i should go for first?

[Colt45]

Aiz, nice shots - a couple of questions:

Did you use a tripod? I think it's a good idea for still life.

Why did you choose such a high (to me anyway ) ISO?

Thanks for the pics - keep shooting

[adic88]

Colt, thanks for the feedback!

1. No tripod, did you notice some camera shake? A good tripod is on the list of to-buys, certainly... looking at it again, seems that shot 2 and 4 seem a bit less sharp than i would have preferred. Not sure how to get it sharper, short of messing with the file RAW.

2. The ISO was set to auto, not experienced enough to fiddle with that yet. Trying to keep my controllable variables to a minimum while i learn. Should i set a low ISO? 100? Shots taken at night, though... so only ambient light is a ceiling light about 12 feet away.

[Colt45]

Colt, thanks for the feedback!

1. No tripod, did you notice some camera shake? A good tripod is on the list of to-buys, certainly... looking at it again, seems that shot 2 and 4 seem a bit less sharp than i would have preferred. Not sure how to get it sharper, short of messing with the file RAW.

2. The ISO was set to auto, not experienced enough to fiddle with that yet. Trying to keep my controllable variables to a minimum while i learn. Should i set a low ISO? 100? Shots taken at night, though... so only ambient light is a ceiling light about 12 feet away.

A couple of the images do look slightly out of focus, and I've run into the same taking macro shots hand held. With RAW shooting, you have to be

willing to do the post processing. I know many shoot RAW to avoid jpeg compression, but I think today's cameras have great capabilities all around.

As to the ISO, 400 is probably typical for indoor low light shots, but I thought you were using flash. It might be worth setting up a shot and trying it

at different ISOs. In theory, 100 would have less noise than 400, though with a good camera, it probably isn't a grand divide.

I'm no camera or photography expert, or intermediate either But I deal with images every day for my job.

[Rogers72]

Cool Pics! One question that I have is if you could clarify what exactly you are talking about when you say flash diffuser? If you are using your built-in, on camera flash and something to diffuse it, I would recommend not using any flash and instead using available and/or natural light. Those on-camera flashes are typically pretty harsh. You can create some neat and cheap off camera lighting using what you have in your house i.e. lamps, etc. and diffusing it using with bedsheets or something like that. Kinda fun to play around with if you don't have a "professional" lighting setup.

The 430EX speedlight is a neat tool. With the lens that you have, I think it will serve you wonderfully for indoor candids, portraits, etc. I would also purchase some sort of plastic difuser for it as well. A 100mm macro would serve you well for still life macro type stuff but is a little on the long end for the 1.6x (i think) crop camera that you have for most indoor portraits. Just my opinion but I think you would be better served with either the lens that you have OR a 50mm prime like the one from Canon that was recommended in another thread. The 50mm prime from Canon (non L) is a super fast lens at f1.4 so you will be able to do some cool stuff in low light with razor thin focus depth. It looks like you already have a great feeling for depth of field.

One of the best places to learn all things Canon and all things photography is:

http://photography-on-the.net/forum/

[CanuckSARTech]

Quite nice - beautiful shots. Some tweaking and fine tuning will come into play when you get more comfortable with your camera. I like your framing and point-of-focus for your subjects, too.

Well done. Wish I had a decent camera, but, I'm too focused on getting great smoking stock right now!

[Guest Robusto 107]

Iso will not be a big issue becos the noise control is really good for the current models, I think 400 even 800 is still acceptable. Of course if u use flash, more prefer to use 100 for finer grain.

Secondly I advise you may need a good tripod. I guess you may not use flash everytime becos the picture will be more natural if ambient light is captured. Also when macro is used, will be advisable to stop down the aperture (f8, f11), to gain a deeper depth of field so that different distance will be in focus and better contrast and picture quality. In addition to lower iso, the shuttle will slowdown, shaking will be more obvious and so a tripod may need.

[adic88]

f5, 1/60 shutter, diffused flash. 18-55mm kit lense.

[Fuzz]

IMHO, for macro shots, a tripod is a necessity. You can never be perfectly still... unless you are dead. Even a slight tremor can ruin a shot.

The 100mm is a good macro lens, especially if you go for the IS model. Check out the review on the Digital Picture http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Reviews...ens-Review.aspx

The pic below was taken with the 100mm f/2.8 L IS USM at ISO 100.