Feedback on 2 macro images

The other day a neighbor and her husband gave me some roses for my birthday. Since I recently got an Oben rail, I decided to try it for these. The rail worked flawlessly; however, I should have used some type of remote to fire the shutter. Live and learn as they definitely should have been a little sharper.

I eye-balled the exposure ahead of time and felt it was good. I used Live View and had a big ol' hair show up on my display. Despite using a blower for the sensor as well as the front/back of the lens, the hair remained. Then I remembered I was shooting with my D610 (not my D750) which meant there was a clip-on protector over the display. And that's where the hair was hiding. :shame:

Please give me some constructive criticism as I'd like to delve a little more into macro.

Cindy,

I don't know much about macro work, so please take my CC below with a grain of salt...

I like the first shot better than the second. I find that the green leaf on the left side of the image is distracting me away from the beauty of the rose.

Prefrosh01 said:

Cindy,

I don't know much about macro work, so please take my CC below with a grain of salt...

I like the first shot better than the second. I find that the green leaf on the left side of the image is distracting me away from the beauty of the rose.

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You are right--the green does take away. Thanks!

F stop is way to shallow( not sure if thats the right word) if thats the 105 nikkor macro lens open it up to F 16+I also don't see much in focus

Kevin H said:

F stop is way to shallow( not sure if thats the right word) if thats the 105 nikkor macro lens open it up to F 16+I also don't see much in focus

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I need more practice working at these shallow depths of field. I only wanted the center portion in focus, but as I said, I should have used a remote to trigger the shutter. The lens was just about at its closest focusing distance making the DOF the shallowest. And since I pushed the shutter button, the movement must have been captured despite the camera being on a tripod. Thanks for your feedback.

A while back, I read a write-up on the following book which is just being released. My copy should arrive within the week. I hope it will help with the technical side of macro photography, and according to the two reviews, it does just that.

The Complete Guide to Macro and Close-Up Photography: Cyrill Harnischmacher: 9781681980522: Amazon.com: Books

Lovely colors. I'm not seeing anything in focus, but I'm old.

If you don't have a remote and want to keep you finger off the trigger, you can use the built in timer. With a remote, try mirror up mode to reduce mirror flap vibration.

I like #2.

singlerosa said:

Lovely colors. I'm not seeing anything in focus, but I'm old.

If you don't have a remote and want to keep you finger off the trigger, you can use the built in timer. With a remote, try mirror up mode to reduce mirror flap vibration.

I like #2.

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Thanks for the comment. Yes, I should have used the timer with the mirror up. I haven't done much with macro ever so I need to remember all the comments I've received so far. I had trouble focusing using Live View zoomed in--even though I am near sighted and took off my glasses. So part of the lack of sharpness was definitely from that. Need to do more macro shots to get comfortable with the differences between how to do it compared with landscapes.