Night Moth

Carl_Constantine · Post by **Carl_Constantine** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 9:00 am

Don't really know what kind of moth this is, but the antenae look like feathers. He was very cooperative and stayed for several shots. If I had been thinking, I would have done more and done a stacked image, but alas, I was not. And this was all handheld, and trying to get good focus and dof was really difficult for me.

This guy came around our picnic table the first night we were camping.

ISO 1600 | F8 | 1/13s | 90mm Macro Lens | Sigma Super DG-500 Flash (with omnibounce diffuser)

Ken Ramos · Post by **Ken Ramos** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 5:39 pm

Well you still got a pretty good shot of it Carl, sometimes we have to take what we can get and miss the rest. Happens to me a lot.

Pretty good shot though. Thanks

Carl_Constantine · Post by **Carl_Constantine** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 5:58 pm

thanks for the encouragement Ken.

salden · Post by **salden** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:01 pm

Looks like a mealy moth to me

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:24 pm

Carl,

I'm looking at this picture and thinking about the question that you asked over in General Discussion forum.

The DOF and focus placement here is not bad. You might have been happier to stop down a bit more, and maybe a small shift in angle might have been enough to put one antenna in the focus plane so the whole thing would be sharp. Or maybe not. It's hard to tell without being there.

But what's got me really puzzled is the combination of flash with a slow shutter speed (1/13 sec). That combination is what caused the blurred & doubled legs. Normally, flash exposures should use the fastest shutter speed that will sync properly, typically around 1/200 second. The ISO setting is also odd. You've got lots of light with macro and flash, so there's no need to scrimp on ISO. For 1:1 stuff, I normally shoot at ISO 100 to get the smoothest tones (least noise), and even at f/16 with a pretty wimpy ancient flash, I'm having to set the flash way below full power.

It almost looks like your camera is set up to determine the basic exposure from ambient lighting, and then the flash is added in as an afterthought. That would explain the slow shutter, as well as your observation that your flash pictures are often overexposed.

Make sense? How do you have your camera and flash set?

--Rik

Carl_Constantine · Post by **Carl_Constantine** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 6:53 pm

Hi rick, thanks for the comments. I appreciate everyone's help and comments greatly.

The ISO was a mistake. I had it set high for some night shots the other night at the races (I pit crew for my brother who races ministock http://photo-op.ca/?p=100) and forgot to change it.

As it happens, it was relatively dark when I took this photo of the moth. We had some light from a table lamp (light bulb on a 6volt battery). I put my flash on to make sure I got good illumination, and even had one of my daughters shine a flashlight on the subject so I could get a focus point. I noticed the ISO setting later and nearly kicked myself and hoped the moth would come back the next night, but no such luck.

I used F8 to try and maximize my DOF as much as possible. But I used Av mode, so the camera guessed at the rest given my ISO settings and flash I guess.

I did get a couple shots with his antenae in pretty good focus, but then the clarity on the eyes was gone given my light and ISO issues. I was moving around a bit to get focus so I don't know if helicon would help here or not. May try it out anyway. This shot was the best of the 3 or 4 shots I took at this angle. Got a couple others of his "back" too.

rjlittlefield · Post by **rjlittlefield** » Mon Aug 21, 2006 7:40 pm

Carl,

I have a Canon 300D. I can't quite duplicate your setup because I don't have an external E-TTL flash. But presuming that an external E-TTL flash acts the same as the camera's built-in flash...

I just now tested with Av mode, and I got the same result you did. The camera chose shutter speed based on ambient light, and then apparently adjusted the flash power to give some reasonable overall exposure.

I got much better results in M mode, forcing 1/200 sec. Then the camera used the shutter speed and aperture that I selected, and adjusted flash power to give a good exposure.

By the way, with your rig you can stop down quite a bit below f/8 and get more DOF while retaining good sharpness. f/16 should still be pretty sharp at the pixel level, and for web-resolution you'd be happy with f/22, maybe even f/32. See this posting and/or this web page for test series using the same type camera and a very similar lens.

--Rik