Proverbs 28:27

This shot is one of six that I contributed to a large collection ofnew photos that hang in our church foyer. The theme for the projectwas, "The Church Unleashed," which refers to Christians being turnedloose into the world to do God's work.

This one was printed on canvas at about 20x30". It pictures mybrother, posing as a homeless person, reflected in my son's eye. Although this one gets lots of compliments from people in the church,I'm not entirely happy with the quality of the shot. I took 150photos during an hour long shoot using several different lensconfigurations, and this was the sharpest shot I could get of mybrother. It didn't help that leaning the camera (or the eye) in orout by half a millimeter made a huge difference in the focus point inthe reflection. This would have been much easier if I'd had a modernmacro lens with image stabilization and automatic aperture control,but my best macro lens is a 25-year-old manual lens.

I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions you may have.

very nice love the reflection in her eye very nicely done! I give it 6/7

Ben... A very eye catching image (sorry, couldn't resist). While excellent, once you stop to examine it, perhaps the message would be more apparent with a tad more contrast and selective burning and dodging. I've attached an example of my thoughts, I'm sure you could do better with the original file. Oh yes, I did remove the little dark reflection (a weed perhaps) along the brick wall. It seemed an unnecessary distraction. If you don't like my version, I'll be glad to remove it. Regardless, a well done shot... Mike

 

 

Thanks, Mike. I do like what you've done. Yes, the weed is a little distracting. I probably should have removed it, but I'd already done a lot of postprocessing to remove reflections of the lens and my son's knee (along the right & lower iris), and I was getting tired of it. If I'd gotten the focus correct on the man, the weed would have been out of focus & not as apparent.

As for the contrast modifications, I think something half way in between yours & mine would be better. I did already do quite a bit of contrast/color modification myself to get what you see above. Perhaps I didn't go far enough. I actually prefer that the skin surrounding the eye be soft and desaturated, but the man & eyelashes could stand to be a bit sharper.

My biggest regret with this photo is that I couldn't use a smaller aperture and still keep my shutter speed up high enough to avoid blur. I would have liked to have more of the man and more of the eyelashes in focus.

You can see the original photo that I started with here. (How do you insert images inline?)

Ben... Yeah, halfway would work great. When the figure is as pronounced as my version the viewer's eye goes too quickly to that point. An interesting concept that you've done well with.

 

As for inserting a photo... at the bottom of this comment entry is the "Proceed", then "Confirm". At that point look for the "Browse" button and add your photo link and "Upload". In order for it to show onscreen, it can't be over 500px wide (I think - that may be 700 - try it and see); otherwise it just shows as an attachment.

 

Mike

It's a great shot. Despite how you may feel about the quality of the shot (we tend to be our own worst critics, don't we?), I think it shows a very nice detail. I like the composition, point of view and the concept is fantastic. Well done.

I think it's a fantastic image - don't think I could have done better with either of my macro lenses ... also, whatever Mike did works great.

The more modern versions of this macro lens are not substantially better than the one you have used. You might even have tried an older one (55/3.5) which is sharper than the modern versions.

 

You just raise the bar to an extremely high level when you:

 

1) Go beyond 1:1 with using extention rings.

2) Don't use a tripod

3) No mirror-up

 

You might have done better using a longer lens and getting closer to have more pixels covering the reflection. Problem is that the 105 is a lesser lens than the 55/60. You would have ended up with a 70-180 or the 200 (I have no experience with the Sigma/3rd party 150/180 versions which allegedly are very good).

 

In post processing you could have raised contrast as previously shown and done some local sharpening via, high pass filter on hard light.

Thanks for the opinions, folks. My complaints about the lens used weren't due to the image quality of the lens (I quite like the lens, in fact), but the combination of manual focusing and metering on a lens that can only do 1:2 on its own and a subject that didn't permit using a tripod. The other lens I tried was a 135mm non-macro lens, but when I added enough tubes to get reasonably close, it was so dark that I couldn't maintain a fast enough shutter speed to prevent blur, even wide open. As much as I enjoy tinkering with old, manual lenses, there are some situations where it just doesn't work well. Your comments do give me some things to remember for next time, though, which is exactly why I like this site.