Camo

[Hooksie]

Hey everyone, I figure I've been lurking long enough now. Thought I'd share a couple of pictures I recently took on a trip to Florida.

These were taken at Corkscrew Sanctuary in Naples; a couple different little guys trying to blend in.

Both images were taken with the Nikkor Micro 60mm.




I'm still very much an amateur, so any advice would be well received. I'm especially a fan of "harsh, honest criticism".

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Hooksie,

A fellow D5000 owner (at last), welcome!

These look pretty good to me; crop/composition isn't bad on either, granted; it would have been preferable to have the tips of their tails in shot, but these chaps move quite fast I suspect.

Slightly unfortunate there is so much distracting foliage on the first one - a wipe over with a blur brush in PP might help, but really there's a bit too much. I doubt there was much you could do about it at the time either
You only just got acceptable focus, and given the DoF at f3.2, I think a smaller aperture would be wiser in future; e.g. f8 - f11 for this lens.

In the second, the leaf stalk and the lizard complement each other compositionally, but that straight background shadow in line with Lizzy's nose spoils it (for me anyway), as to some extent, does the darker area bottom left. Not sure if it is viable to do anything in PP to fix these. Again, focus seems to be on the leaf and the eye is only just sharp enough.

Exposure is good on both and at 1/1000 and 1/2000, there's no camera shake!

I tried some lizard shots on holiday and these are much better than mine, so do take heart from that. Mine are so bad they are unlikely to see the light of day here - except possibly as examples of how not to do it

Cheers,

[Hooksie]

Yes, and I very much enjoy my D5K at that.

I agree about the tails. Some shots of #1 have the tail, but the focus wasn't to my liking, and neither was the overall exposure. Perhaps some PP could help them out later down.

As you noticed I went a little over the top with a wide f-stop. I'l slowly breaking the habit of shooting wider than I should.

Many thanks for the feedback.

[Geoff F]

It is very difficult, almost impossible, to get all of an insect in sharp focus so I would prefer the tails to be out of frame instead of out of focus. As such, I would consider an even tighter crop.

There are, for me, 2 reasons for photographing insects etc; one is for identification and the other is to get a pleasing composition. I usually try for an ID shot first then think about getting 'one for the wall'.

Exposure and focus will always be a problem but you have managed a good balance here.

You will find that it is possible to get more of the subject in sharp focus if you are exactly at 90 degrees to it. But with most 'mobile models' they don't like hanging around while you shift around to get the best angle, especially if it involves shuffling tripod legs. I try to get a couple of basic any angle shots to start with so at least I have something in the camera if I spook a nervous subject.