I don't think the photo is unsharp, the depth of field is too small and that is macro challenge number one. There's a few things to combat it. I'll put them here just to share my own struggles because you probably know all of this :)
- In this photo, the butterfly is facing the camera diagonally, giving it more depth, and thus the DOF challenge. By repositioning yourself so that the butterfly is facing you horizontally, the depth of field is limited, and you can get all of it sharp. Of course, that doesn't allow for a lot of creative composition.
- One other way would be to alter the aperture, perhaps to F11. This will let in less light and if you shoot from hand, you'll probably need to increase your ISO, which may introduce noise.
- Both options above are not always attractive, so if I would insist on this particular composition, I would typically just take a step back, leave the aperture and ISO as they are right now, and have all of the butterfly in focus. Then I crop it. With enough sharpness and megapixels nobody can tell given a subject of this size.
- And of course there is focus stacking. Which basically only works with a tripod and a dead or non-moving subject. Not very practical.
As I said, you as Mr Sharp already know this, but I hope this is useful to others.
Lion
Class 12 of 12
Joost Thissen
Posted 9 months ago, modified 9 months ago
Good explanation.
For this photo I see the iso is on 100, normally for macro I set it to 400 so the diafragma gets smaller (higher value) and the DOF bigger. Overall sharpness decreases a bit by this because the noise reduction algorithm hurts sharpness.
In this case another position was not possible. I could have moved a bit further away. I actually took a picture from further away, but that is shaken and over-exposed. This picture was shaken as well, but I was able to sharpen it up enough.
wildlife community
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Aurelia is a nice butterfly indeed.
- In this photo, the butterfly is facing the camera diagonally, giving it more depth, and thus the DOF challenge. By repositioning yourself so that the butterfly is facing you horizontally, the depth of field is limited, and you can get all of it sharp. Of course, that doesn't allow for a lot of creative composition.
- One other way would be to alter the aperture, perhaps to F11. This will let in less light and if you shoot from hand, you'll probably need to increase your ISO, which may introduce noise.
- Both options above are not always attractive, so if I would insist on this particular composition, I would typically just take a step back, leave the aperture and ISO as they are right now, and have all of the butterfly in focus. Then I crop it. With enough sharpness and megapixels nobody can tell given a subject of this size.
- And of course there is focus stacking. Which basically only works with a tripod and a dead or non-moving subject. Not very practical.
As I said, you as Mr Sharp already know this, but I hope this is useful to others.
For this photo I see the iso is on 100, normally for macro I set it to 400 so the diafragma gets smaller (higher value) and the DOF bigger. Overall sharpness decreases a bit by this because the noise reduction algorithm hurts sharpness.
In this case another position was not possible. I could have moved a bit further away. I actually took a picture from further away, but that is shaken and over-exposed. This picture was shaken as well, but I was able to sharpen it up enough.