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Flowers, bugs, and butterflies are my favorite subjects. Just love seeing all the details up close and personal. I have a sigma 70-300mm F 4-5.6 APO DG MACRO for my canon 400D, but in most cases I don't think I'm using it correctly or to it's full potential so it's all very 'practice practice practice' at this stage.
Anyway, I'm a huge fan of these types of shots: butterfly closeup
And I don't know what settings I can achieve these on. When I try, I see that my pictures are only focusing on some parts of the butterfly but not all of it as in the picture above *and* that I have a blurred background, but nowhere near as uncluttered as that one.
I guess what I'm basically asking is how would you experienced types go about shooting an image like that? What are the recommended settings to experiment with?
Thanks again for all of your help and input!
Depth of field reduces the closer you get to the subject. So you need to increase the f number to get more dof. Depending on the lighting you may reach a point where the shutter speed its too slow to handhold at which point you could increase the iso or put the camera on atripod/beanbag.
Close to a bug dof reduces to millimeters, keeping the lens parallel to the subject helps get round this a lot (that is what is happening in the subject you linked too).
With macro photography Autofocus will often let you down so you may need to use manual focusing too.
patience and a steady hand are a good start
the macro setting on telephoto lenses arn't too bad but ideally you want something like a sigma 105mm f2.8 macro which is designed specifically for close up and will enable you to get a lot closer to the object - telephoto's with macro usually closest is about 30cm - a lens like the sigma you can get into around 2 inches.
regarding things like the F stop to use depends really on the object you are photographing and how much you want sharp and what dof
very small focal point use something like F2.8 - the depth of field will be very shallow but creates impressive effects
an object with a lot of texture and details and needing to be sharp front to back (top to bottom, left to right for overhead images)
require a range between F5.6 to anything up to F22+. you will however definitely need a tripod as available light will be miniscule at this setting so shutter speeds most likely too slow for handheld images.
you can cheat sometimes though - not saying this particular butterfly image example has done such a thing but using a program like photoshop you can use selective masking around the shape of the butterfly then gaussian blur the background to your desires.
another thing to consider is how the object is lit - you can use reflectors to add light into certain area's. for indoor work you can use a torch to pick out certain points which looks cool.
experiment, practice and ask around
hope this is of some help to you - macro is one of my favourite types of photography so i feel i have some knowledge =)
peter "morpyre" turner
A good question, my macro doesn't let me get anywhere near that close so I am not in the best position to say, however I would think that by using a smaller F-stop would give your that much more DOF
an example would be on my montage of flowers the rose bud is taken at F 5.6 at 1000 the F-stops in that montage range from F 4.5 to F 5.6 should I have had a green card somewhere behind these flowers it would of looked totally uncluttered, but since I was not in a studio but was taking them from front peoples front gardens it was not possible. any way, as you can see by those examples there plenty of dof for insects to be photographed without being affected by a very narrow dof.
That's it from my very own limited experience. 
You are using too great a focal length lens. The rule is if you want to limit DOF to a minimum then use a long lens. Therefore the reverse would true if you want to increase DOF. Its a basic rule in wedding photography and works for everything else.
Quote: The rule is if you want to limit DOF to a minimum then use a long lens. Therefore the reverse would true if you want to increase DOF. Its a basic rule in wedding photography and works for everything else.
Unfortunately it is not true of close-up photography. Here, depth of field is a function of the magnification, regardless of the focal length used to achieve it. If you fill the frame with a subject, say, 2 inches long, DOF is the same whether you use a 50mm lens or a 105mm lens or a 180mm lens.
There are some example depth of field figures on page 2 of this thread.
Tutterzzz, Fully, agree with you, but by far, the biggest DOF effect is achieved by changing the focal length of the lens being used, it has a much greater influence on the effect.
You might find it useful to refer to a discussion of depth of field on Wikipedia. Scroll down to the section on close-up, where it says,
"When the subject distance approaches the focal length, using the formulae given above [which are based on focal length of lens] can result in significant errors. For close-up work, the hyperfocal distance has little applicability, and it usually is more convenient to express DOF in terms of image magnification."
It gives a formula and continues, "... for a given magnification, DOF is independent of focal length. Stated otherwise, for the same subject magnification, all focal lengths give approximately the same DOF. This statement is true only when the subject distance is small in comparison with the hyperfocal distance, however."
It may also be worth bearing in mind that in close-up work depth of field extends approximately equally in front of and behind the plane of focus. This contrasts with photographing at larger distances where dof is approx twice as far behind as in front of the plane of focus.
Point taken John, as I dont do close up tog and only general pics I was overlooking the close up argument. TX Colin
Quote: the macro setting on telephoto lenses arn't too bad but ideally you want something like a sigma 105mm f2.8 macro which is designed specifically for close up and will enable you to get a lot closer to the object - telephoto's with macro usually closest is about 30cm - a lens like the sigma you can get into around 2 inches.
Thank you, that's very helpful! I think the closest I can get with my existing is a sad 150cm :'-(
I was thinking about getting another one, I hadn't researched the 105mm you mentioned yet, but I had looked at sigma's 18-50mm F 2.8, and a friend told me the 18-50mm has a lower reproduction size than the 70-300 I already have. I wasn't quite sure exactly what that meant?
Can anyone explain reproduction size, and how it works with lens's? (not sure about the apostrophe rules on lens hehe I hope that's right)
I am new to this too.
I also have the Sigma 70 - 300 APO lens and started doing a bit of macro stuff with it. The macro only works between 200 and 300mm. Unless you are able to use a very fast shutter speed, hand holding that lens and achieving sharp images is going to be nigh on impossible.
In the end I bought a Sigma 105 and I have the Sigma 18-50 2.8 (bargain at 260 squids from Bristol cameras.
This is a magnificent lens. I can hold hold quite frequently and get reasonable shots, I can keep my distance from jittery bugs and because it's a dedicated macro (prime) lens I get excellent quality and a magnification of 1:1
If you are really into macro then I can really recommend this lens BUT, to really get the best from it, or any other macro projects, you do need a good tripod.
Buying my tripod and USING it has really set me on the way to taking much better photographs.
After the best lens you can afford, buying and using a tripod has to be be the next most important piece of kit.
Hope these experiences are helpful
While a tripod gives you the best stability it can be rather limiting/awkward unless you also have a focusing rack to both focus and also adjust framing to a limited degree. An alternative way is to use a monopod, pre-setting focus in MF and moving camera to get the focus where you want it on the subject which the mono permits.
Alternatively you need some form of stabilisation to effectively give you that extra couple of stops so long as the subject is not moving.
While you are contemplating to get a mono or not try some shots using a ski-pole. walking stick, or cut down broomstick to support the camera. Refined perhaps with a thread to suit the camera's base tripod bush. [threaded hole].
Could well be a quarter whitworth bolt clamped to the broomstick with a hose-clip. Slightly better would be to drill a 6mm hole in the end of the pole and screw in the bolt, then cut off the head so that two or three threads are exposed .... basically what I do when I have made my own monopods, except I have square aluminium tubes which slide inside each other like the shop versions.
I would make a comment on taking big close-ups that the idea is to get a tight framing and how close you get to do that is relatively unimportant. That you are kept 150mm from the subject is good becuase your gear doesn't cast shadows on the subject and is less likely to scare the little fellows compared to say a 50mm macro lens which will almost be touching them to get a tight framing.
If you do want to get a tighter framing than a subject 44mm across, one solution is to organise yourself a moderate close-up lens. But getting a quality one to match your Sigma lens will be expensive. A proper 90 to 105 'macro' lens that is 1:1 capable, instead of 1:2 as your Sigma, will get you a 22mm across subject while keeping you away from the subject. Also expensive but much more convienient as people have written above.
1:1 capable means that the lens permits you to have an image on the sensor the same size as the subject ... thats 22x15mm with your camera .
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