tramsey Loc: Texas

I took this a couple of days ago with my Nikon cookpix p510 , before the weather got pucky. 21mm ~ F/4~ 1/400

Bob Yankle Loc: Burlington, NC

Alas, your camera's autofocus system chose the upper stem of the flower to bring into sharp focus, with a resulting camera blur on most of the other sections of the photo, includiing your butterfly. I assume the butterfly shoud be the attention-getter, and there's nothing you can do in PP to correct blur.

The solution is usually to shoot in spot focus, point first at the butterfly to achieve focus lock, then keeping the shutter half-way down, recompose your shot. You had the composition part down just fine ..... now you've got to master your focusing technique.

Chuck_893 Loc: Lincoln, Nebraska, USA

Bob's got that right. It would be a spectacular shot if the focus were only on the butterfly. I have a favorite "cheat" that I freely use sometimes when the focus is chancy, and it could be that in this case the focus was not a "focus fault" but rather some subject motion, or camera motion, or both. At these magnifications, even with a small sensor, depth-of-field is still measured in millimeters, and few of them, and if there is any breeze your flower will be moving and so will you. My "cheat," assuming friend butterfly will cooperate, is to quickly select continuous, basically motor drive, and blast away for as long as I can. It's disgusting, I know. It's the true meaning of "spray'n'pray," but in hand-held closeups it may be the only reasonable way. Upload everything to your favorite PP app and enlarge to 100%, then start dumping the fuzzies. :evil: :evil: :evil: :twisted:

tramsey Loc: Texas

I see that now. It's going to be cold, windy and drizzly here till Tuesday so I'll have to wait till then for the butterflies. But until then I can practice on anything I find around the house.
Thanks for the tip about spot focus. :thumbup:

tramsey Loc: Texas

I think I'm going to set my camera on 'continues' or 'burst' or 'blast' or 'spray and pray', whatever they want to call it, that's where I'm going to set it and that's where it's going to stay. I can always delete the fuzzies.

I'm going to have to find a cheat or devise one of my own. That's a really good idea.

Thanks for the tips.

:thumbup: