First Outing With a New Old EF 180mm f /3.5 L Ultrasonic Macro - Your Thoughts Please

[SignifDigits]

I think I like the first crop well enough, but would appreciate inside from others. These were not my best results.  I will share those separately.  I'm wondering if any of these are worth keeping, and if you agree that the first is the best.  It is the tightest (and I think the most interesting).

Thanks in advance for your feedback.  Also, how are you guys able to post the larger photos than I post here?

  

 

 

[stevet1]

SignifDigits,

If you open your image in a simple photo editing program like Irfanview, and choose the Image tab, you can resize it and re-save it.

I'm not sure of this Forum's size limits, but I would try and keep it to 1000 or less. That's better for people with smaller viewing screens anyway.

Not sure you need to worry about it though. These are just thumbnails anyway. If you tap on any one of your pictures, it blows them up to full size.

Steve Thomas.

[SignifDigits]

Thanks Steve.  Resizing isn't my question (the limit is 9.97MB btw), but the size of the thumbnails displayed of a number of others that post here is larger than what I'm posting.  It's not a size contest, but just so that folks get to see more of the photo without having to click on it.  I'm assuming they are doing something differently than I am to generate that.  I just drag and drop into my post from Windows.

[zakslm]

I don’t know the settings, but I’m guessing that your f/stop was close to wide open. A 180mm macro close to wide open probably has a very narrow depth of field.  My personal experience with macro (60mm macro on a crop sensor body) is that f/11 is my best friend.

Also, bright yellows like the flowers in your photo sometimes over-saturate and detail is lost.   Maybe try another subject or dial down the saturation a bit in post.

I emphasize with you in that you’d like the first images produced by your new lens to look perfect and beautiful like some examples you’ve seen online. Sometimes there’s a learning curve before those beautiful images start showing up. 

With regard to image size, I shoot in RAW use DPP to process. I save the images as JPG’s and resize the images before savings (locking aspect ratio) keeping the long edge dimension at around 2,000mp. 

Hope that helps. 

LZ

[SignifDigits]

@zakslm Thanks LZ.  I had not done anything with them in post.  I was really mostly interested in feedback on composition.  Guess I should have made both of those much clearer.   Sorry for making your eyes hurt!

I cropped the first one tight and the rest less so.  I was shooting  f/22 - could have gone to f/32 but would have driven the ISOs higher than I wanted.  I felt I was getting the largest reasonable DOF possible.  Wind wasn't blowing so I was shooting 1/50 - stepped that up to 1/250 as the breeze came through with higher ISOs, and could have done so as I was clearly shooting them too bright.  I wasn't expecting top-shelf macro results handheld and no focus bracketing - just getting what I could without those elements.

Here's the same series with some minimal post-processing.  I still think the first one is perhaps the most interesting, but not so sure about the rest and looking and as my wife disagrees about which one she likes the best (she likes the last one best and I'm guessing that she is right) I'm asking for advice on cropping, framing etc. on a biggish group of flowers.

And yes, the lens got dirty somewhere along the way - just in case someone notices 🙂

 

 

 

[zakslm]

I apologize for misinterpreting you post!  Sorry about that. 

I don’t want to cause a marital rift, so I’ll say both of you are right!  I like the isolation of the main brittlebush flower on the tighter crop and the grouping of the flowers in the background in #4.

My only nit to pick on #4 is maybe that one would have benefited from a larger aperture so the flower in the left corner and the flower to the right of the main subject were more out of focus. You could tighten your crop to exclude those 2 flowers in whole or in part. I probably would try a 4:5 crop cutting out the flower in the left corner and including half of the flower on the right. I’m not saying that is right, but that’s a guess from someone who crops almost every shot to 16:9, 5:4 or 4:5 with an occasional square crop every now and then. 

Keep posting shots with your new lens. I look forward to your next post!

LZ

[SignifDigits]

Thanks for the input.  No worries on the marital front.  We've been together long enough that I know she is always right 🙂  Mostly, but we also enjoy having our different opinions.  I do see why she likes that one and I will try a different crop as you suggested to improve it.  I always use 3:2 or 2:3 as I like to print stuff off on 4x6 a lot if I want to seriously "get it right" on the post. 

She really doesn't like so much of the scene out of focus, but I didn't know that until after I was shooting.  It didn't matter really as even at f/22 (also I was afraid I would introduce diffraction at f/32) it was obvious that getting anything really into focus was a bit of a crapshoot without a tripod and focus bracketing.  I kept feeling like the DOF was tiny to nonexistent.  I was with a group of photo-nerds out taking pics, but it was my first time with these folks and breaking out the tripod and micro focusing rail seemed a bit over the top so I just got what I could handheld. 

Shooting macro is a lot of fun, though and I hope to do more of it. It's like entering another world that mostly gets overlooked by me.  There are SO many cool things to shoot.  I shot this group of flowers and didn't even see the fly as I was just trying to get something in focus (bottle fly maybe?  -not an expert).  I for sure didn't notice the tiny spider webs on the yellow flowers either.

 

[zakslm]

Part of the cool thing for me about macro is just as you said, finding things in the photo that you did not notice or see when you took the photo.  I’ve discovered little creatures I didn’t notice and details I did not see many times. 

I rarely use a tripod because I roam around looking for things to shoot but probably would benefit if I used one more often. 

I think that the more you shoot with your new lens, you’ll find your “sweet spots” or range for apertures you prefer using. It’s not always the same based on the distance from the subject, size of the subject, lighting, etc. 

As for lighting, I play around with that too. Here’s a shot I like that I took yesterday at f/11 with fill flash from the pop up flash on my camera. Natural light was flat (overcast) and in shots taken with ambient light only the colors in the flower didn’t “glow” like they did with fill flash.  I’d like to say it was planned but it was more like a happy accident. 

In other words, experiment, evaluate your results and  implement what you learned. 

Have fun!