feeding bee

Best regards Sam!

PDE

Hi Sam,

Nice picture. very colorful.

Improved presentation from some past images that showed more noise, etc.

I am not excited by the use of F/13.....as the  lens performance roll off is well seen.

Best Regards,  Mike

Hi Mike,

what's that exactly ?

I'll be grateful for a lesson in lens performance!

cheers

Sam

Pierre,

I'm very pleased you like this composition & colour scheme!

Thanks for looking & commenting.

cheers

Sam

Hi Sam,

The condensed version: assume a good lens, like your 50mm F/1.4 is a good lens.

All lens is provided with an aperture stop to control the amount of light that gets tot he sensor. The aperture stop provides correction, to some degree , of aberrations that all lens will inherently have . The degree of the aberration relates to the design, glass, build quality, etc and the best lens have every little if any detectable aberrations at any f-stop. A not so good lens greatly benefits from being stopped down .

Now, DOF is the apparent sharpness that we interpret from an image as the lens becomes smaller (f-stop is a larger number). This apparent sharpness is due to the loss of the finest details first such that the next more details become more coarse and are perceived by us as focused.

The softness of the image follows. This softness is often very pleasing to the eye, such that our brain accepts this is part of a good image.

The loss of definition always occurs for a good lens that is stopped down.

The trade off is unavoidable.

For your image, it is very pleasing to view and F/11 works. However, if I needed to see more details in the flowers or the bee , the use of F/5.6 would nearly double what is present now, but at the loss of DOF.

Now, your lens set to F/1.4 would not continue to provide improved image quality because its aberrations would interfere with the formation of the image on your sensor. The best stop for your lens falls between F/4 and F/5.6 for the highest definition.

Again, trade offs are always required, because to shoot a night scene, F/1.4 or F/2.8 might be the only way to grab a shot. The  loss is definition is accepted by the fact that the image was captured. A better lens can be shot wide open.

Best Regards,  Mike

Hi Mike,

thank you very much for your elaborate & comprehensible explanations !

I'm getting more & more focused after your critiques & comments.

cheers

Sam