Viewing post #159808 by Cottage_Rose

Mike said:Vicky,

Thanks for your feedback. Those photos were all taken with one of two lenses I use in the garden: the Canon 28-70mm macro L lens (shown here), and the Canon 100mm macro lens, mounted on a Canon 5D II camera. I used a tripod with the camera's mirror locked up, and exposures set on a two second delay after pressing the shutter release, so that there was no camera shake to blur the images when each photo was taken. The 28-70mm lens is probably the most versatile lens I own (and an older one at that, since it has been "replaced" by Canon's newer 24-70mm L lens). This lens is typically used for portraits and group shots (sometimes known as the wedding photographer's lens), or for moderately wide angle landscape shots, and is far less commonly used for macro work. But it's actually built (and labeled) for macro photography, and due to its zoom range I find it provides greater versatility in the garden than my Canon 100mm fixed focal range "dedicated" macro lens. I find myself using it just about everywhere I go - except for bird photography, when I pull out the big guns (the 400mm and 500mm lenses that reach nearly a foot and a half in length!) I also manually fine tune the auto focus for each shot, by enlarging the image on the LED screen so that I can see details, and turning the focus ring just ever so slightly to get the exact focus I want. Then I use a two-step sharpening procedure in Photoshop to achieve the clarity and crispness I want for each shot. Sometimes I'll darken the backgrounds, but since I do a lot of my photography in late afternoon semi-shade, the dark backgrounds typically happen on their own! Later afternoon light eliminates white-out glare (also known as clipped white balance), but it also sometimes leaves my leaves with a somewhat "bluish" hue which I occasionally have to correct so that they appear as green in the image as they do to the human eye when looking at the same scene in person.

BTW, I love your orb web photograph. Is there dew on the silk threads, making them more visible than would otherwise be the case? I have a lot of these webs all over the garden at this time of the year. I enjoy photographing them with morning dew on them if they haven't been too torn up the previous night by flying insects. I have about 6 of them right now, and call all my spiders "Sylvia", and know where each one lives.

Uhhhh. . . . thanks Mike! I will copy that and get back to your after I take some photography classes this winter,