Morkstar Loc: Newcastle United Kingdom

Just took this of my resident garden jumper and am deeply unimpressed with the quality. Pixels are huge in the eyes (OOF again but if this is it then I won't bother)l.

Have I reached the edge of what's possible with my current setup?

EOS7D with 100mm macro and home made diffuser.

1/250th f/16 ISO250

Heavily cropped image but otherwise as shot.

Thanks

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

This image has been heavily cropped. Please post your original Out-of-Camera photo.

I suspect that you are NOT shooting at Minimum Focusing Distance. At MFD, your Working Distance (lens front element to subject) is 160-mm = 6.3-inches.

Morkstar Loc: Newcastle United Kingdom

Out of camera.

The spider was no more than 2 inches from the front of the glass. this was with the lens turned all the way clockwise.....

tinusbum Loc: east texas

set your lens to 1-1 and move your camera to focus

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

Set your lens to Manual focus, then turn your focus to MFD. Move your entire camera/lens combo in-&-out towards subject. When in focus, take your photo. You will capture 1:1 (life-size), and your WD will be 6.3-inches.

This will be of interest to you:
FAQ: How to Document Field-of-View of a Macro Lens
http://www.uglyhedgehog.com/t-36370-1.html

Morkstar Loc: Newcastle United Kingdom

Thanks for the advice - really appreciated. The lens is always set to manual. I rested the lens against the edge of the wood it was on and adjusted marginally from max. I don't understand what WD of 6.3" means (sorry for my ignorance).

I think I'm happy with the distance. My problem is with the pixel size. I can try dropping to ISO100 and/or going up to f/32 and upping my flash power but that seems too easy...

I want the pixels smaller. Do I need more magnification and if so can you advise how I do this? I have 28 and 50mm lenses I can reverse but have no tubes (yet).

Thanks

Nikonian72 Loc: Chico CA

Your 100-mm macro lens can focus no closer than 6.3-inches WD.

With 68-mm of extension tubes, you can achieve 2:1 mag (2x life-size) with a WD of about 4-inches.

Morkstar Loc: Newcastle United Kingdom

Sorry - you are right. I forgot the Lens hood!

I will look at some tubes.

Thanks

martinfisherphoto Loc: Lake Placid Florida

Looking at the photo I can see focus was off a hair. Couple of things you can do. I placed my camera on the table close to the end so I could look thru and focus on an object. I used auto focus at closes distance to subject 1:1 I then adjust diopter till the object was in sharp focus, making sure I was seeing what the camera saw. If you are using focus manual you must see what the camera is calling focus, if your off the focus will be off. Now if it were me I would use auto focus until I was real comfortable at this macro stuff. I did for the first 5 months. When I focus manual I focus my lens all the way out to 1:1 and then remove my hand from the focus ring, I place my eye to the eye piece and move in until focus acquired, now blast away. Single center focus point, slowly rock forward, acquire focus press shutter button. ISO 320 1/200 shutter speed F/22. If you nail focus you can pull a crop 1 mega pixel photo from a 16 mega pixel camera and have a very good photo, but you have to Nail the photo. I also use Define2.0 to remove the noise, it really helps your final product. If you use tubes then you start introducing Flare/contrast, camera movement, closer focusing distance, shallower DOF just to name a few things, which will not improve your photos, Until you jump this hurdle first. Now if you want to use tripod it's a whole different game, hand holding at high magnification is as hard as it gets, once you master this then it's much easier to move forward at higher mag, while hand holding. Tripod, just aim and fire, but now you subject is either frozen or dead. Try a good monopod with ball head to help hold camera still. The guys on this forum that nail the shot continuous dedicate Time and effort. I went thru a 3 month period with little work and would chase bugs/photograph 2 or 3 hrs a day 5 days a week. It ain't easy or everyone would have killer results. Macro is strictly hands on, the more you practice the better you get, no jumping ahead.
I went back and checked your earlier post, the rolly polly and the iris were dead on focus. You started in Nov, but has been winter until now, unless you've been practicing.

Morkstar Loc: Newcastle United Kingdom

Thanks for the advice guys, I really appreciate it. This picture was handheld and I had to hurry as this particular spider only comes out when the sun is shining on his hole. Sunshine is in very short supply at the moment. I'll try again and take more pictures to try to nail the focus.

Cheers

martinfisherphoto Loc: Lake Placid Florida

This guy is Extremely small and fast, you might want to practice on larger subjects until you get comfortable. When you get past 50% of your shots in focus, you are getting in the groove. I'm still below 25% on the 2.5:1 macros. Long ways to go for me also.

Morkstar Loc: Newcastle United Kingdom

OK, so I tried today with AF on. Here's what I get. My big problem is that I can't see that any of this image is in focus. I can't identify where the focal point is on this image. There is nothing remotely sharp. It's as if the whole DOF zone is soft. Does anyone have any ideas?

Is it me or the camera or the lens?

Morkstar Loc: Newcastle United Kingdom

I'll post the original momentarily

martinfisherphoto Loc: Lake Placid Florida

What camera and lens again please. Are you using the Single center focus point. Only one of your focusing points should be illuminated in the view finder, move it to the center then place this focusing point over the spiders eyes and pull the trigger. Depending on your camera you can set up to only release shutter when focus is acquired.

Morkstar Loc: Newcastle United Kingdom

Hi fstop22; Its an EOS 7D with a Canon 100mm Macro lens. It was set up to single point AF. Spider was stationary and the AF was exactly on the eyes (I think). I've read now that I can select a custom function called spot AF which is an even smaller focus point. I'll try that and see if that helps.

Experimenting with the AF the camera may be missing the spider and focussing elsewhere. I can focus manually on tiny objects with sharp focus (I think) in the house so I think it's just, as you have said, down to me and not the camera or lens.