The first little orchid

Forehead

I've bought several orchids from our favorite grocery store. However, all of the plants lasted only one season--except this one, which has blooms that are (at best) about 1 1/4 inches across.

Not that my camera can hold a candle against a DSLR with a macro lens, but I tried anyway; shot from about 1 inch away with ISO 50, 1/500 sec and f/4.6 (manual mode), and a little tweaking with the unsharp mask and tone adjustments.

Awais Yaqub

nice for the 1st try but why it is very soft ?
colors looks fine

Forehead

I've taken hundreds of macros with my Nikon E5400 (fifty just of this orchid) and, no matter what settings I use, I just can't seem to get the image quality that REAL macro lenses on DSLRs can get.

I'm sure that ANDY can concur with that!

Awais Yaqub wrote:

nice for the 1st try but why it is very soft ?
colors looks fine

Awais Yaqub

hmm i am not comparing it with DSLR but point and shoots also produce reasonable sharp image as you said you have shot 50 for this orchid mey be its aggressive NR of camera or low sharpness settings
my sony w1 the most soft camera according to people produce sharp macro of flowers the images you see shot by me are all w1 images
on the other hand 5400 is great camera and with great macro mode
my flora gallery (w1 closes distance 6cm)
http://awais.smugmug.com/Flowers

zigzag

Forehead wrote:

I've taken hundreds of macros with my Nikon E5400 (fifty just of this orchid) and, no matter what settings I use, I just can't seem to get the image quality that REAL macro lenses on DSLRs can get.

I'm sure that ANDY can concur with that!

Question #1: were you using a tripod?


All-in-one lenses do tend to suffer a loss of sharpness when macro mode is engaged, but you might be surprised how much loss of sharpness you get handholding at that magnification.


The other question I'd have is where exactly is the focus point. It looks like it may be behind the main blossom somewhat.