In the Garden...

[Susan]

so relieved, at last our Clematis has flowers on it hahah i'm not very green-fingered and thought i hadn't looked after it well enough! Relieved to see it's got 2 full flowers and 3 buds

Any C & C welcome as I'm new to shooting flowers ans using 35mm zuiko macro.

Cheers
Susan

[Malcolm Cousins]

Re: In the Garden...

First and second are very nice Susan. The third just seems a little out of focus.

[JohnGG]

Re: In the Garden...

I like the first shot in particular as the shallow DOF has thown the background into a pleasing blur. The red stem (?) in the second is a slight distraction but this is also a good shot

The third is not quite as successful as either the focus is slightly off or you have had a bit of camera shake Were you using a tripod or was the shot handheld? If handheld, were you using any image stabilisation or, lacking that, were you able to choose a faster shutter speed to help compensate for the inevitable wobbles?

When you get towards half life size magnification and above it becomes more and more difficult to hold the camera steady without a tripod or beanbag. Not only do you wobble the camera from side to side slightly but you also sway back and forth. This means that once the camera has got focus lock you keep moving the camera towards and away from the subject, thereby passing the subject through the plane of focus. This is very shallow at higher magnifications so keeping the camera steady becomes more and more critical. (My macro lenses are all manual focus OM Zuikos but I wonder if C-AF would help alleviate the back and forth wobble if using a digital Zuiko lens )

Although they can be awkward and slow to use, tripods are very useful for this sort of shot. Because they hold the camera steady for you they allow you to choose a slower shutter speed than you could if handheld. This in turn allows you to choose a smaller aperture for greater depth of field and/or a lower ISO number for better image quality. If you have live-view with magnification this can be much easier to use for critical focussing if the camera is on a tripod.

Please keep on taking and submitting shots from your garden. There's an enormous range of subjects out there to practice on which will I'm sure give pleasure both to you and the forum

Cheers,

JohnGG