Okay so what did I do wrong????

[chrisa380]

November 14, 2008 at 5:08 pm

Took my new D80 out for a spin and got this. As a general photo I like it, however, I took it with a Sigma 70-300 macro and mounted on a tripod and to be honest I kinda had the intention of cropping it right down as far as I could, but when I crop it, I’m not happy with the clarity/ quality that I’m seeing on the screen.
I’ve seen similar water droplets in this forum before and they look amazing, so I’m kinda dissapointed. I know the DOF is a bit narrow but when you zoom in, the quality is just not there!!
What am I doing wrong??
Thanks,

Chris.

[pihjin]

November 14, 2008 at 5:13 pm

The image you’ve posted looks fine but it’s very small so it’s hard to see the lacking detail…

Did you use a tripod? What ISO was your camera on? Did you capture it as a RAW file?

Knowing a little more about the shot might help me (and others) help you but for now it looks like a pretty great shot to me!

[chrisa380]

November 14, 2008 at 5:21 pm

Thanks, I used a tripod and it is captuerd as a “Large Jpeg Fine” ISO was 400 I think. I’ll see if I can resize it. I tried some last week in “Raw” but I don’t know enough about histograms and Editing software etc. to do anything fancy.

Thanks,

Chris

[Alan Rossiter]

November 14, 2008 at 5:44 pm

I see you had your lens at f5.6. With f5.6 you can expect a shallow depth of field. Open it up to f11 or even f16 or thereabouts. You’ll see that the amount of droplets that are fully in focus will increase. At 1/40sec for f5.6 you can expect a shutter speed of around 1/10 sec or 1/5 sec for f11 & f16 respectively so be prepared to either use a remote or the timer on your camera (the D80 has a timer, yeah?). Also you were shooting at 300mm which is at the extreme length of the lens which will push your image quality to the limit. Try somewhere mid length and get closer. I’d nearly look at an exposure compendsation reduction of 2/3rd stop to give the lighter areas of the image (the all important water droplets) a bit more definition.
I don’t do macro shots but there are more people here that will give you specifics for macro photography.

Alan.

[chrisa380]

November 14, 2008 at 5:51 pm

Cheers Alan, the Sigma lens I’m using only works in macro between 200-300, but point taken, I’ll try it at the 200 mark next time.

Thanks again,

Chris

[vividimages]

November 15, 2008 at 1:43 pm

Chris this is a droplet I done a few months back using a 50mm 1.8 nikkon lens and 68mm of extension tubes. Iso 400 f18 1/80th, shot handheld.

If this is the sort of image your after id forget using the sigma, i had one and to be honest the macro function on it is really only for closer focusing distance. To get closer with your lens id say get some extension tubes. If you have a 50mm get a reverse mounting adaptor for it and you will get in alot closer about 5cm focus distance.
Cheers Gareth

[chrisa380]

November 15, 2008 at 2:14 pm

Gareth,

Thanks, all tips gladly taken, I really like your shot, that’s the sort of quality I was talking about, I’m guessing a lot of that is due to the fact you used a 1.8 lens The other lens I have is a Nikon 28-80 3.5, do you think the reverse adaptor would work on that??

Chris