Some Advice Would be Nice

[Wirefox]

I really wanted this to work but......



Am I self flagellating along the right lines?

• f/8 was too wide to get all the fluffy bits in focus at a shooting distance of approx. 5ft (I focused on the centre of the dandelion head)
• 1/400 was to slow to to freeze the movement adequately
• High speed sync flash may of helped to freeze the action and get better separation between the fluffy bits and the background

Your thoughts would be appreciated.

[ScoutR]

The background is rather busy. I'm wondering if this is a situation where if the background was farther from the subject DOF would be shallower at the same f stop and perhaps the fluff would have stood out more????
Also wondering if fill flash, just the on camera flash, at a negative EV (or whatever you call reduced flash) -1 or 2 might have helped.

Both are serious questions, sorry I'm not much help, but I do wonder if I am on the right track theoretically. In reality I never know what might happen until I try it.

Wendy

[Geoff F]

Yes, I agree with everything that you have said, Steve. And I also agree with Wendy that the background is a large part of the problem.

Wendy, I normally use a little 'negative flash' on my macro shots. Set the aperture and shutter speed to whatever is needed then use a suitable ISO. Adjust the flash output to fit.

Somewhere around -2/3 to -1 usually works out about right. But it does take a little bit of experimentation; although once you get the 'eye' for these scenes it should be possible to guess the settings fairly accurately.

[Wirefox]

Wendy, Geoff

Thanks for the input I think you have both confirmed my own thoughts. I had another go at this HERE much better results. I did not use flash but I did go for a neutral background and reduced the aperture to f/10 and pushed the shutter up to 1/640

The fill flash would work of course but I did not want to blow out the face. I need to experiment more with fill flash