Fun with a Macro Lens
Probably some sort of blow fly:
More pictures on my Picasa page.
I’m still learning the EOS 50D. Today I improved my skills at choosing the right aperture, shutter speed, and ISO. I also figured out that in bright sunlight I should just set it on P (Program Mode) and let the camera choose. I also figured out how to review images in the field, and delete maybe half of the bad ones. That makes later reviewing in Lightroom a lot faster.
I also realized how to see which autofocus points the camera was using. However I did not figure out how to tell the camera to just use the center point. When you’re shooting a 2mm fly, you want the camera to focus on the fly, not the nice green leaf 1cm away and 2cm back, which it did with distressing frequency. 9-point auto-focus is not a good thing for macro work. After returning home and consulting the manual I think I see how to do this next expedition, as well as how to set the white balance to meter off the bug and its immediate vicinity rather than the entire frame.
May 18th, 2009 at 7:54 AM
Nice one. I remember asking a friend who is a photography expert about my new camera, and what to expect. He said, “Your macro mode will have the approximate depth-of-field of a cigarette paper” :-) Yours is a lot better, but still, when the front half of a *fly* is in focus and the back half isn’t…
May 31st, 2009 at 10:22 AM
I have the much lower-end Canon 450, the “P” is not the fully automatic mode, the “Green Rounded Square” is. Maybe things have changed on the newer models, on mine the “P” is the manual settings mode.
On my Canon you can only set the focus point(s) when it is the “P” mode. It took me a long time to figure out which button it was, because I couldn’t be bothered to find my manual.
I always set it to middle focus point only, I find that the auto-selection of focus points is not very good. It should be a little more heavily weighted on the centre point. It is particularly poor close-in, it will always favour a background point.