# Nature .. up close but not close enough



## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

using the "close up" option on my Nikon Coolpix 4300. 
rescaled to 1024*768 using Gimp


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

nice shots DF :grin: these are my "bug on a leaf" shots - first one not so clear unfortunately - tried to get closer than the lens could handle


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

I have several that have that problem .. they look OK when at standard amplification but when you zoom in they "lose" the edges ... really nice bug though .. reminds me of dragon flies


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

yep - it is a tiny dragonfly - they are about 15-20mm long and dart about my backyard in pairs - their brilliant colour is the only thing that gives them any visibility - to my poor old eyes anyways


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

Again, Congrats to you both for the close-ups. That coolpix is certainly working for you D_F


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

As you know, have recently bought a new sigma 50mm macro lens. Apart from the odd test, I haven't had much of an opportunity to use it in full macro mode until 3 - 4 days ago.

We have nasturtiums growing in the garden. Cabbage white butterflies plant their eggs on the underside - the caterpillars love that leaf and will voraciously devour the whole plant in no time flat.

I discovered a clutch of butterfly eggs an thought it would be a reasonable test of the macro...

Being relatively new to 1:1 macro, I learned a couple of lessons.
1) Use a tripod,
2) use a focusing rack
3) when in macro mode, there is the image movement problems as there is when using a telephoto lens!

However - good or bad, these are the results.

To give you an idea of scale 10 - 20 of the eggs would go on the head of a pin. The new born caterpillars are only just visible to the naked eye. In fact, I thought I was only photographing the eggs until I looked in the viewfinder and saw the wriggly critters!


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

you are just rubbing salt in the wound Don .. just beautiful shots taken there.

The lesson I learnt about movement and patience with my 4300 must be a nightmare with your kit .. Patience with a capital P is a must!


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## WereBo (Apr 5, 2008)

Very beautiful shots there both guys :grin:

@ Zulu - I love your butterfly shots, the detail is superb, even down to the 'hairs' on the wing's trailing-edge (most clear on the 'Chalk Blue'?)

@ DOnald - Are you sure those eggs weren't oozing ikky gunk and had tiny octopus-like nasties inside 'em? They look suspiciously like something from the 'Alien' movies


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

I didn't mean to rub salt into the wound at all...

I feel as if I am now about to give you a Freemason's secret...I am a member of probably the best photographic website/forum. It caters for every branch of photography including Macro Photography. If you want to pick up info on tips & tricks, have a look here.

My particular interest, Aviation Photography is catered for here. This single thread is maybe the biggest thread on any forum anywhere. 1211 pages, 30,266 postings and 1,250,767 viewings!

Since I joined, my bar has been raised from all the help. Maybe worth a look to get some ideas from....

One of the tips I got but not tried yet, is to gaffer tape (or attach) another lens in front of the camera lens - If you have a DSLR, use a reversing ring and put the lens on back to front....:grin:


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## WereBo (Apr 5, 2008)

Cooooo... I remember reading about that, when I used to get the 'Practical Photographer' magazine every month, for my 35mm Praktica :grin: 

Reversing the lens is good practice for manual settings, you lose all the electrical connections to/from the lens, so you HAVE to set it manually :laugh:


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

I know you didn't Don .. I just ooze with envy when I see what patience and better kit can do to a photo ... All my photo's above were taken without a tripod. There are more failures than good shots but it was really just another practice session with a purpose at the end. I just love taking photo's and prefer to get them in focus as well as the camera allows.


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

That is what it is all about. Getting the best with equipment at hand. On fredmiranda.com they talk about 'keepers, the images they keep. In the aviation section, the keepers rate is quite low, maybe as low as 1% or less. With fast jets 'showing off', as you can imagine, the action is fast and furious. High speed multiple exposures and lenses that can track/refocus on fast moving objects....... It is like using the camera like a chain gun - point it at the object an keep you button on the release button and hope and pray something gets in the way. :grin:


A similar 'keepers' rate applies to macro because of the incredibly small depth of field - less than 0.5mm in some cases a tripod in mandatory. Macro is when the image size of the object on the film/sensor is the same size as the object itself.

With close-up photography, the image size, though much larger than normal, is usually smaller that the object. That said, there is an art in getting good close ups. I used to have a Nikon 5700 which was one of the predecessors of your camera. so I know the problems you have.

Doing close-up without a tripod is difficult, again because of the very small depth of field. Close-ups with a tripod can be impossible at times because just as you think you have the set up right, the darn thing flies away! That is one reason to use a monopod. Its quick to deploy.

Two tips on close ups:
If possible have the camera parallel to the body of the object so the the maximum area is in focus.
If not possible to do that, then make darn sure that the eye nearest the camera is as sharp as possible.

If you are achieving a keeper rate of say 1 - 5%, then I guess you are doing well, especially without a tripod. :smile:


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## WereBo (Apr 5, 2008)

You can easily recognise when you're getting 'very serious' about outdoor macro-shots - You find yourself without a tripod/monopod and swaying with the insect/bug that's sat on a wind-blown flower etc.  :grin:


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

:lol: reminds me of my youngest daughter & I on one of our walking trips. Chasing butterflies only to realise that the group was nowhere around to be seen .. luckily we were on our way back and knew the route to [email protected]!


This is one of the photo's she grabbed in close up mode using a 12MB sony cybershot. rescaled to 1024*768. A handheld shot ... very nice I think


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## WereBo (Apr 5, 2008)

WOW!!! An excellent shot of a beautiful butterfly - An excellent example of what can be done with 'Point 'n' Shoot' cameras :grin:


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## WereBo (Apr 5, 2008)

Below is a 'sort of' macro-shot taken when I wuz using my ol' Praktica BX20, years ago. I can't now remember what lens I was using, but I'd just bought a flash-attachment called a 'Rima MegaBlitz'.

It fitted over the flash-window via an elastic strap and split the light into 2 beams which, using a clever arrangement of mirrors, came out either side of the lens (similar to a 'Ring-Flash'). The beauty of it was that each small 'window' had a filter-slot, so different colours (and combinations) could be used.

This flash-gun is too big to use it and I can't find my smaller one that works perfectly, but it gives you an idea of it all. I've just noticed that I'd fitted it to the flash the wrong way round







. The 2nd pic shows the bits, with 1 green filter for demo purposes. The weird Hot-shoe attachment is to hold the flash-gun at 90 degrees, horizontal over the lens.




















In the photo, the taller pewter 'model' is exactly 8.5cm tall and I used green (to highlight the foliage) and yellow (to give a gold-effect to the pewter models) colour filters - The strange blue ball thing is the lights reflecting of faceted crystal balls they're holding. They were posed in a flower-pot full of various ferns...











Oh, sorry about the page-curl, it's a very old photo and it wouldn't peel off my web-site easily.... :grin:


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

I too started off with Praktika's .. still have the second one! In between I tried a Chinese SLR with the name of Seagull. Was always going to get myself macro rings but couldn't even afford developing .. in spite of the numbers of rolls used.

Edit:

this is another shot I have taken and a close attempt at doing what Don has done by making use of simple utilities in Gimp. 

same picture, no editing except zoom and Print screen. 

btw I am using Ubuntu & Gimp for Linux .. in case anyone feels that in linux there are no photo applications.


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## zuluclayman (Dec 16, 2005)

DF - you say you are using Print Screen a lot - is this to enlarge the size of your image after cropping? if so there is an easier way from within your image editing software in your case GIMP
Resizing your image using GIMP: open your image, go to Image in top menu bar>Scale Image. There you can set the pixel dimensions and also the resolution to the values you want as well as determine the method used to interpolate - this determines the accuracy of the enlargement - bicubic is the default and is good quality, sinc is even better quality but may take a little longer to process.

nice shot of the butterfly btw :grin:


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

I thought I had tried that but ended up with a very small "crop" sized image, whereas I am assuming since my screen is set to 1024*768 that using Print Screen or Screenshot (Linux) will give me a larger sized image . I will check again later to see what differences there are.

:wave: Thanks for your suggestion. All advice gratefully accepted.


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## DonaldG (Aug 23, 2007)

I concur with ZCM's recommendation to resize with the software rather that screenshots...

For the moment, ignore your screen resolution and look at the camera resolution.
Your Coolpix has multi resolutions:
2272x1704, 
2048x1536, 
1600x1200, 
1280x960, 
1024x768


Setting the camera at 2272x1704 will give you maximum resolution quality. Lets call this 'full native resolution'. Basically it gives you a larger image to play with. Lets say the image file name is img_1234.jpg

Personally, I would do any after processing at this size. (gentle sharpening, adjusting the brightness & contrast, setting any color corrections or any other tweaking that I might need/want to do.)

I would then save that enhanced image with a slightly different name img_1234enh.jpg. This tells me that any image with 'enh' added is an enhanced/tweaked copy of the original at full size.

Then depending on the output media: Printer or screen, I would then crop the image to suit the subject and then resize it with the software. Virtually every software that I have seen has a resizing/rescaling tool.

Generally I resize to 1024 pixels wide for display on web pages and resize to 500 to 800 pixels for emailing.

After resizing, an image can often accept another very gentle sharpening.
Once I have resized the image, I save it, appending the size to the file name such as img_1234enh1024.jpg

I often end up with many files from the original. Viz:
img_1234.jpg
img_1234enh.jpg
img_1234enh1024.jpg
img_1234enh800.jpg
img_1234enh300.jpg
If I have done a big crop or created a special version, I also add file name accordingly. Vis:
img_1234enh1024crop1.jpg
img_1234enh1024crop2.jpg
img_1234enh1024hdr.jpg
Etc

I am wondering if there may be a misunderstanding with respect to some my aviation images or the egg images above, that make them appear as if they are enlargements. They are not enlargements as such. They are tight crops and some are near full native resolution. The other images are reductions from the original native size. Bare in mind that my big Canon is a 21Mp with a native resolution of 5616x3744 - that gives a massive image that can take huge crops and still end up with unresised image greater than 1024. 

Sharpening: there are a host of sharpening methods, depending on the software you are using and/or personal preference. It is helpful to understand how digital sharpening works. Basically it is a process of increasing the contrast of the EDGES within the image that gives an optical illusion of being sharper. However, there is a down side to sharpening if it is done too heavily - Edge halos can appear overly intrusive.

If it is possible to turn down the amount of sharpening in your software, then do so. Turn it down so that when you sharpen, you can only just detect the minor change. then sharpen again at the much reduced level. Several very minor sharpens gives you far greater control than on regular/big sharpen

D_F have a look at the following:
Have a look here - some interesting details about the Coolpix.


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## Done_Fishin (Oct 10, 2006)

Thanks for that info Don .. I'll have to look into it later though .. am rushing right now ..


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