The making of a bad photo....I ordered a rock for my aquarium from eBay and received it this week from the seller who lives in Texas. Along with the rock, I received this kinda cool looking bug, so I decided to use it for macro photography practice. This is the best of about 200 photos I took last night... :-\ Looking back on the session, I did a bunch of stuff wrong, but I can't say the time was wasted. -I learned a few lessons last night, and figured I'd share the whole experience here...
First, I set up the area like I usually do for studio shots: I did these on the kitchen counter, so I set up a white background to use under and behind the bug. I turned on the overhead halogen spot-light thingy for direct overhead lighting, I had a the soft light from a ceiling fan (2x 40w equivalent fluorescent bulbs) behind me and overhead, a floor lamp with a 60w equivalent fluorescent bulb leaned at about a 45* angle so it'd be pointed directly at the subject from my (lower) left, and a halogen desk lamp on the counter to my right and very close to the subject. The desk lamp is really powerful, though, so I placed my other homemade softbox in front of the light to eliminate the harsh reflections it would cause.
I then put my camera on Apeture Priority mode and took some shots of the bug on a white piece of plastic at f/16 with a Shutter Speed of 1/2 second. I got 4 or 5 shots that are fairly crisp, but after reviewing them, I found that they were boring since they involved only the bug. I needed something else to add interest... I hunted through the house, and eventually got the idea to use my wooden mannequin as a prop.
My original intent was to use a vertical framing to get more of the mannequin in the shot, but since my tripod won't allow a vertical camera position, I shot it from further away thinking I could crop it later. My technique was to set my focus, catch the bug, put him on the mannequin's hand, then when it looked like he was in a good position, hit the remote shutter release as many times as possible (if any) before he moved; then go back, review the shots, reset the focus, and try again.
First, when I backed the camera up (I was using a Canon fixed 100m f/2.8 lens), I apparently lost light because I kept the camera on Aperture Priority with a setting of f/16 and it just kept blinking at me. I ignored the settings I used on my previous shots, switched to Manual mode and did whatever I could to get the shutter speed up fairly high (1/60 to 1/125) thinking I had to stop any of the bug's motion, and then I tried to get the aperture as small as possible (preferably between f/8 and f/16) to get a deeper depth of field to make it more likely that I could get a sharp shot. This included setting the exposure to be underexpose by 1 stop (because the scene was so light with the white background). But, no matter what I did, I could never get a sharp shot. Even with the flash turned on I couldn't get anything close to acceptable. In the end I kept blaming my focus -I felt that being so far away meant it was harder to see, therefore harder to focus; so, I moved the camera in closer and framed the shot as you can see above.
I took shot after shot using the same technique as before although at some point I learned something new: by puffing air at the bug (kindof like stuttering the first part of "but" over and over at it) -he'd stop crawling around to investigate the air for a second. That was super helpful -it meant a slower shutter speed could be used! But, I felt (at the time) that "slower" meant, like, 1/60 because I tried a few at 1/30 or slower before, but saw movement and blurring. :-\
I'm dumb...
I apparently hadn't paid attention the first few photos that were taken at 1/2 of a second or I wouldn't have been so focused on trying to keep the shutter speed from 1/60 to 1/125 while attempting these shots. -I find that when I get frustrated by both not getting the shot I want (and with the added complexity of a constantly moving subject), I loose track of the technical details and stop thinking about what I'm doing. Another lesson... but one I consider "under construction" -I need to work on calming down and going through my options more carefully.
With the puffing technique (and perhaps with the bug getting tired/frustrated) I was able to stand behind the camera and manually focus when the bug was still, then take my hands off the camera and press the remote shutter to take a photo. The shots were getting better, but upon zooming-in on the LCD, they were still not usable... So, I kept doing this over and over trying to get the aperture smaller while keeping the shutter speed up to freeze any motion. After many photos, I was in another rut, but the bug kept staying fairly still... -How about an even slower shutter speed and mirror lockup I asked myself? So, I turned it on. The bug, surprisingly enough, stayed still enough for me to take quite a few shots like this. Not that they were getting much better...
Eventually, I got the one you see above and I quit. I was tired, frustrated, and going back and forth between kicking myself for buying this lens when it's obviously my technique that needs work, and remembering how well some of my first shots had been when I bought this lens in the fall...
While reviewing my shots on the computer I noticed another glaring mistake. The white background, with the light-colored mannequin made for a dull photo... Sure, the bug stood out, but the photo just didn't "pop". I guess I was too frustrated to notice. So, this morning I took a little time in Gimp to try to make white turn into blue...
I'm just angry with myself over this one. It could have been so much better. The depth of field is the biggest technical problem -it's just not deep enough for the mannequin to be obvious enough -I find myself squinting and looking for more detail there... I mean, it didn't need to be (perhaps, shouldn't have been) in sharp focus, but more detail would have made this photo a bit better. The vertical framing with more of the mannequin included in the shot would help the composition too, I think, but the bug was so far away when I had it set up like that -I don't think I'd be able to see well enough to get it in focus. Of course, if I would have let the shutter speed get lower so I could use a smaller aperture, that'd probably help...
Grr... I want to be better at macro shots :-(
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