I took the action to shoot today but….

October 23, 2009 Photography

At 4:30pm I went outside to shoot for a half an hour. That I did what I said I’d do felt good. Coming in and looking at my captures didn’t feel good. I even went out and shot a few more shots with the same bad results.

I used my Canon 40D with a 50mm 1.4 lens fitted with a Canon Extension Tube EF 25. I shot 48 shots…..most out of focus, all uninteresting and all will be quickly deleted once I study them and figure out why the focused parts of the shots are not where I wanted them to be.

The depth of field using this extension tube is so shallow. Shooting the flower shots I did was a setup for failure I see. Very few of the parts that made up the flower buds were on the same plane. I shot with an aperture of 10 for this shot below and still only limited planes of the flower are in focus.

Not much luck with my first 1/2 hour a day shooting discipline.

Back to looking at my photos to see what more I can learn.

Just read this at the bottom of the linked page above:
Depth of Field (DOF)
“Also, as you get closer to the focus object the Depth of Field (DOF) gets very narrow . This requires some very precise work to get your entire subject in focus with the extension tube mounted on the shorter focal length lenses. But increasing the f stop will increase the DOF just as always.”
I was right on top of the flower. The flower was almost touching my lens hood!

After shooting with the same camera setup at my desk tonight, with only overhead lighting, I learned how hard it is to handhold this camera setup, how extremely limited the range of focus is (I can’t believe how much of the scene is out of focus in the elephant head shot below. The difference in focal length was so minimal on the slight curve of the holder. I also learned it’s easier to move the camera in and out closer and farther away than focusing on the lens.