Canon IXUS 240 HS
Canon PowerShot SX240 HS
Nikon D800
Samsung DV300F
Olympus OM-D E-M5
Nikon Coolpix P510
Canon PowerShot SX260 HS
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ30
Nikon Coolpix S9300
Hemel Poppy Field
Just as I leave the M1 at Junction 8 on the way to work, there’s an amazing field ablaze with poppies, which I’ve been meaning to photograph for the last couple of weeks. On Friday of last week I made a quick visit during my lunch hour; all of these photos were taken using my 100mm f/2.8 Macro USM lens.
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Double Poppy
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New Wheat
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Single Poppy
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I learnt a few valuable lessons during this brief shoot:
1. Taking close-up photographs of wild-flowers is enough to make the air turn blue (with my swearing), as even the slightest breeze is enough to ruin your composition and focusing. I can understand now why a lot of flower photography takes place indoors!
2. Depth-of-field is all-important in macro photography. If you take a close look at the “New Wheat” photo, you will notice that the top and the bottom of the wheat is less in focus than the middle, which is where I focused. I think the aperture was f/2.8 for this shot - it should really have been around f/5.6 to ensure that all of the wheat was sharp, whilst keeping the background out-of-focus. Next time I’ll use the DoF button on the Canon 10D and take a selection of shots of the same subject at different apertures.
3. Attention to detail is all-important in macro photography. The “Double Poppies” photo has some annoying elements in it that should have been removed; I completely failed to notice them!
4. You need a lot longer than 1 hour to do justice to your subject and yourself. I was literally running round the field at one point, desperate to realise the next great idea that I’d had, before having to go back to the office.
5. Always wear a hat when exposed to 28 degrees sunshine in the middle of the day…
Canon IXUS 240 HS Review
Canon PowerShot SX240 HS Review
Nikon D800 Review
Samsung DV300F Review
Olympus OM-D E-M5 Review
Nikon Coolpix P510
Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ30
Canon PowerShot SX260 HS
Fujifilm X-Pro1
Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX200V
#1 Emese
Interesting observations Mark. I remember running around a poppy field early this spring with a G2. Even with the G2 and it's much greater depth of field, a lot of my shots turned out a little blurry thanks to some pretty intense gusting winds.
I was a little surprised to see all the "pros" with their tripods, shooting basically above the field. I seemed to get the most interesting shots by crawling around in the dirt (sometimes literally) and shooting upwards from below the flowers or at least at the level of the flowers. I now see I could have never done that with the 10D. It's much heaver, requires greater precision when it comes to DOF and focus, and it doesn't have that flip out LCD which allowed me to compose shots and focus without getting my head in the dirt as well.
On a different note, these photos make me want that 100mm macro lens even more.
11:39 pm - Monday, June 16, 2003
#2 Tommy Williams
One thing that some people do on very still days to get more depth of field with the macro lenses without stopping down to f/22 or smaller (where diffraction effects will start to get you) is to take several frames of the flower with the focus on different points. Bring those shots in to your image editing program and combine them to get the depth of field you want.
There was a great article about this on Photosig, but until the articles feature is restored in v2 I can't point you to it.
8:41 am - Tuesday, June 17, 2003
#3 Mark Goldstein
I've read about taking multiple images and then combining them in Photoshop to create an image with a balanced exposure e.g bright sky, dark foreground, but that's the first I've heard about doing something similar for DoF. Sounds interesting. When is version 2 of Photosig scheduled for?
Mark
2:08 pm - Tuesday, June 17, 2003
#4 Mark Goldstein
BTW Tommy, thanks very much for the link
It's nice to see my name alongside the likes of Fred Miranda and Michael Reichmann!
2:09 pm - Tuesday, June 17, 2003
#5 Ed Garrard
I take multiple images when I shoot floral shots. Like the Luck article you linked to, out of several takes, one will generally be good.
4:35 pm - Tuesday, June 17, 2003
#6 Tommy Williams
On Photosig v2: it's the version that is currently running. However, some of the features from v1 have not yet been implemented (such as articles). http://www.photosig.com/
7:41 pm - Tuesday, June 17, 2003