Nathan V

Same camera, same lens. I dunno WTF I did that the last two ended up blurry. Doesn't look quite like I jerked the shutter button to me but I dunno... not steady enough with the camera or...?

D40 55-200mm lens, hand held.

Thoughts? (I can post the larger versions if that might help?)

The Turk

What was your shutter speed? Were you all the way zoomed in?

9deuce9rr

i dont know about the second one, but the first looks like it's not shook or anything. on ur 100% crop, if you look at the pistils or whatever they're called, they look in focus and steady. looks like u just had your f-stop wide open, creating a real shallow focusing area

PhaQGM

Photoshop'ed the hell out of them to make the red flower stand out?

Nathan V

IIRC it was 100% zoomed in... but so were those first two. I'll pull the shutter speed from the EXIF and post that. Don't remember ATM.

No photoshop at all on any of those. Snapped pic, converted to jpeg in infranview, uploaded to photobucket.

It was shallow for sure, but it seems like even the 'focused' area isn't as sharp as it should be to me. (Last two images, not first two. Focus should be the red tulip) I'll post up a higher resolution version tonight that'll show it better.

Inflex

Can see some ghosting on the edges of the flowers in 1, 3, and 4, which says there might have been some camera movement.

For 2, what was your focus distance? Maybe the lens couldn't focus that close?

keninseattle

From what I've read (and found out with my own lenses) there is a "sweet spot" as far as tack sharpness with each lens. With my 17-50 2.8 it's at f4 and 5.6 at 30mm. With my 100-300 f4 it's at f5.6 and f8 at 230mm. I've taken a series of shots with my camera on a tripod using my wireless shutter release and then compared them and found those were the sharpest settings. Maybe you were shooting outside of the sweet spot and thus the softness? Just a guess.

Nathan V

1 is focused on the inside of the flower, so the edges aren't in the focus area. 2, the focus was set at the smallest distance the lens would do and I just physically moved the camera until I was happy with where the focus was. Easier than using auto-focus to get what you want.

The ghosting in 3 and 4 are my concern. I suppose just lower shutter speeds and a not perfectly steady hand could have been the cause... Still learning.

plummy

if you're trying to do close-ups/macro with a lens that doesn't want to do it, it can be difficult. in my experience (and on a million review sites), zooming in all the way and being at the minimum focusing distance creates crap results cause generally speaking, the max and min zoom range are adequate at best on almost all lenses but have way better results in the middle range. which is why i bought a prime macro.

and haven't used it in 10 months.

would have been cool to get the wasp in focus in the last one, though.

Inflex

When I look at 1, the edge looks more like ghosting rather than a soft blur that you would expect from a small depth of field.

I think for 2, it's not too easy to manually get a sharp focus without the built-in sharpness indicators (I'm forgetting my terminology here). Were you using the view finder or live view? If you're having problems, trying setting the focus point to the center only. If the camera still won't focus, it says there's not enough light or you're too close to the focus point. For a lens like that the minimum focus distance is probably 3-4 feet.

Next time, try playing around a bit and then zoom in on your images to check for sharpness.

Nathan V

I don't think the D40 has that option..? I was using the viewfinder. :(