First bugs with new macro lens-6 images and ?'s

Jack'll do

Well not really the first shots, but the first I felt at least somewhat comfortable with. I am really thrilled at the results thus far though I know there lots of room for improvement, I'll be posing some questions in this thread hoping some of the macro gurus will be able to give me some tips for improvement.

1.
Probably should have shot this first one head on I guess. I tried rotating the canvas but it just doesn't look as good for some reason.



2.
No matter what I did in PP I could not get those glaring white spots less so without degrading the rest of the image.



3.
Would like an ID on this one.



4.
Harvester spider? Whatever he is he's welcome as he eats the critters that chew up the leaves on my roses.



5.
A poor capture of a hover fly. I long to be able to capture these showing the eye detail (my holy grail)



6.
Even tho the detail is poor on this, I love the colors and composition.



Now the questions. But first I want Phil to know how much I appreciate his turning me on to Noise Ninja. I would still be stumbling along with grainy backgrounds were it not for him. (The down side is that it sure shows up a dirty sensor!)

a. I am using a D80 with a Micro Nikkor 105 2.8 lens. and shooting pretty much at min. focus distance using ambient light only. Would extensions or a TC allow me to capture the finer detail? If so are there any that will still allow AF? I find that due to my particular vision, what looks to be in perfect focus to me, actually is slightly OOF even though I've adjusted the diopter on the camera. So manual focus doesn't work so well for me.

b. My post processing (for #1 above): I shoot in JPEG fine getting an image about 3874 px wide at 300 px/in. In CS3 after running noise ninja (without it's sharpening), I crop and then cut the resolution down as much as needed (usually to between 125 and 200) to give an image width between 800 - 1000 px/in. Then use curves, color bal., hue/sat etc as needed finally applying unsharp mask. This seems to give me the best results. Is there a better way? What about the whole resampling issue (I usually leave it checked.)?

Hope I'm not being a pest but I am really motivated to improve in this area. It is fascinating and definitely addictive.

GOLDENORFE

hi jack, i like the hoverfly best. the whites have blown alot,mainly on harvestman spider.
first try shooting RAW, you have great control over highlights, using recovery and highlight sliders to help reduce highlights.
also try underexposing a little,you can always brighten in RAW without damaging image.
extension tubes will help fill the frame to get more detail, but auto focus will really strugle at the higher magnifications, not knowing where to focus on. setting different focus points manually may help to focus on head and get a decent composition.
phil.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

Mark Edell

Very nice set! congrats on the new toy

Jack'll do

GOLDENORFE wrote:

hi jack, i like the hoverfly best. the whites have blown alot,mainly on harvestman spider.
first try shooting RAW, you have great control over highlights, using recovery and highlight sliders to help reduce highlights.
also try underexposing a little,you can always brighten in RAW without damaging image.
extension tubes will help fill the frame to get more detail, but auto focus will really strugle at the higher magnifications, not knowing where to focus on. setting different focus points manually may help to focus on head and get a decent composition.
phil.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/goldenorfe/

Thanks Phil. And thanks for the PM which I have responded to. I intend to set up a controlled experiment to quantify and validate my impression that in my case manual focus is not as sharp as AF. With that data I'll be off to my opthamologist to see what he can do for me.

Jack'll do

Mark Edell wrote:

Very nice set! congrats on the new toy

Thanks Mark. I just came from your site. I love your bird images.

Lord Vetinari

Lovely series
The shots look a bit too bright and saturated to me- Not sure if that's the post processing. I tend to just de-noise, use levels and then sharpen. Very rarely play with colour etc at all but it is a matter of personal taste.
You really need to sort the MF issue out. Not sure how you adjusted the viewfinder dioptre, but you just need to point the camera at the sky - do not focus the lens and adjust the dioptre until you can see clean focus on the AF bracket things around the viewfinder (not the dots). All you are doing is trying to get a focused image of the ground glass screen where the image will appear. You can test the settings by using a well lit cereal box on a table and the lens set to MF - just slide the camera towards the box until you think it's in focus and half press the shutter to see if you get focus confirm.
AF is just not much use for macro with the very thin DOF esp with ext tubes. BTW you still need auto Ext tubes though for aperture control.

Brian V.

Skippy

Jack'll do wrote:

Well not really the first shots, but the first I felt at least somewhat comfortable with. I am really thrilled at the results thus far though I know there lots of room for improvement, I'll be posing some questions in this thread hoping some of the macro gurus will be able to give me some tips for improvement.

Probably should have shot this first one head on I guess. I tried rotating the canvas but it just doesn't look as good for some reason.
No matter what I did in PP I could not get those glaring white spots less so without degrading the rest of the image.
Would like an ID on this one.
Harvester spider? Whatever he is he's welcome as he eats the critters that chew up the leaves on my roses.
A poor capture of a hover fly. I long to be able to capture these showing the eye detail (my holy grail)
Even tho the detail is poor on this, I love the colors and composition.
Now the questions. But first I want Phil to know how much I appreciate his turning me on to Noise Ninja. I would still be stumbling along with grainy backgrounds were it not for him. (The down side is that it sure shows up a dirty sensor!)

a. I am using a D80 with a Micro Nikkor 105 2.8 lens. and shooting pretty much at min. focus distance using ambient light only. Would extensions or a TC allow me to capture the finer detail? If so are there any that will still allow AF? I find that due to my particular vision, what looks to be in perfect focus to me, actually is slightly OOF even though I've adjusted the diopter on the camera. So manual focus doesn't work so well for me.

b. My post processing (for #1 above): I shoot in JPEG fine getting an image about 3874 px wide at 300 px/in. In CS3 after running noise ninja (without it's sharpening), I crop and then cut the resolution down as much as needed (usually to between 125 and 200) to give an image width between 800 - 1000 px/in. Then use curves, color bal., hue/sat etc as needed finally applying unsharp mask. This seems to give me the best results. Is there a better way? What about the whole resampling issue (I usually leave it checked.)?

Hope I'm not being a pest but I am really motivated to improve in this area. It is fascinating and definitely addictive.

Hi there Jack, I'm with Brian on the over saturation of these shots.
Most don't appear to be in focus either.

I hope you can sort out your focus issue, I'm sure you will be set once you sort that out, you'll be fine.

Nice to see you getting lots of help on for the Forum Jack,
these folks are just terrific when it comes to giving help to a fellow dgrinner ... Skippy
.

Jack'll do

Lord Vetinari wrote:

Lovely series
The shots look a bit too bright and saturated to me- Not sure if that's the post processing. I tend to just de-noise, use levels and then sharpen. Very rarely play with colour etc at all but it is a matter of personal taste.
You really need to sort the MF issue out. Not sure how you adjusted the viewfinder dioptre, but you just need to point the camera at the sky - do not focus the lens and adjust the dioptre until you can see clean focus on the AF bracket things around the viewfinder (not the dots). All you are doing is trying to get a focused image of the ground glass screen where the image will appear. You can test the settings by using a well lit cereal box on a table and the lens set to MF - just slide the camera towards the box until you think it's in focus and half press the shutter to see if you get focus confirm.
AF is just not much use for macro with the very thin DOF esp with ext tubes. BTW you still need auto Ext tubes though for aperture control.

Brian V.

Thanks Brian. I don't recall how I adjusted the diopter but I know I followed the directions in the manual when I got the camera. As I recall though my eyegllass prescription has changed somewhat and I have gotten new glasses recently. Definitely worth revisting this and will follow your suggestion.
As for the oversaturation, no color manipulation of any kind was done on these images. For example #1 and #3 were denoised, cropped, resolution changed to 150, resized and usm applied. #6 is the original file cropped and resized no other PP except perhaps a little usm. Here's the original as it came from the camera. Cropped to 1600 px wide then resolution changed to 150 giving an 800x600 image. No denoise, no usm no other PP.



HHere's the image I posted in this thread:

Jack'll do

Skippy wrote:

Hi there Jack, I'm with Brian on the over saturation of these shots.
Most don't appear to be in focus either.

I hope you can sort out your focus issue, I'm sure you will be set once you sort that out, you'll be fine.

Nice to see you getting lots of help on for the Forum Jack,
these folks are just terrific when it comes to giving help to a fellow dgrinner ... Skippy
.

Thanks Skippy. See my reply to Brian above re the oversaturation.