Finally captured

[Stagecoach]

This lizard lives behind a hanging canvas painting adjacent to my workstation and regularly peeps out at night before racing at high speed across a short distance of around 6 inches to his food store inside a wall light when a chance meal is fluttering around in it.

His features are quite different to the many others we have living with us (all uninvited) and numerous attempts over the past months to get a reasonable pic to record his good looks have failed until this one last night.

Captured at 1/250th, ISO200, f16, manual, AF-C, handheld, SB600 flash on camera in TTL mode


I'm still determined to get a full body shot of him ............

Grahame

[Tony M]

It must be a challenge to capture such a fast-moving subject. Good luck trying to isolate him body and all!

The image doesn't appear to be very sharp along the edges of his body. Could that be the f/16 aperture? Would opening it up a bit help?

Tony

[Stagecoach]

Hi Tony, thanks for the comment.

It was certainly a challenge and in this instance it was more luck than anything else to get the eye acceptably sharp.

The reducing sharpness is due to both the DOF at f16 with the 105 macro and the angle that I shot it at of which I have limited choice. Last night I set up for another go, remote flash off camera to reduce the underbody shadow, camera close by and ready with increased ISO and speed and set at f25 and he never appeared

Grahame

[Tony M]

Tough luck. It's been a long time since I've done close-up photography and I had to look at some old photos I'd taken of orchids to remember the small apertures that are required. I thought the lack of sharpness was due to the greater diffraction of f/16.

I hope you get the critter next time.

Tony

[Dave Humphries]

I thought the lack of sharpness was due to the greater diffraction of f/16

No, that's (almost) a myth, as Colin was saying earlier today

Although as Grahame says, here it is lack of DoF

Cheers,

[Tony M]

I agree that diffraction is not the issue here. I just saw Colin's comments on the other thread and I'm reminded of when I was inspecting two photos that I took of a skyscraper with different apertures. It was the first time I'd studied the effects of small aperture on sharpness and it was noticeable - at 100% magnification. I was submitting photos in a competition for which the winners would be printed large and so it was a concern.

Tony