Jumping In!

[Tom Wade]

Well here goes, my apologies if this doesn't work but I'm going to give it a go.

After a lot of deliberation (see Advive for novice) I have finally bought a Canon100mm f2.8 macro to go with my Canon 40D and have got some half decent shots which I am going to attempt to put on this forum.

Firstly, I decided on the Canon 100 against the much admired Sigma 150 because I found the autofocus on the canon very quick and even though I have used manual focus, the AFC is very handy. Also the canon lens is lighter and finally was cheaper!

This is the first Macro lens I have owned and it came a bit late in the season but I have been having a play and am very greatful to some of the advice, not specifically for me, which is available on this forum. I am amazed how close I can get and am probably guilty of trying to get a full screen shot of everything. I found a very obliging dragon fly and kept getting closer and closer until I have just the head and top of the abdomen!!!

Anyway I am going to try and put these images on and welcome the comments

I hope this works

[Denise]

Hi Tom,

Lovely shots, especially the Comma taking juice from an over-ripe blackberry.
Well done.

Denise

[Pete Eeles]

Both beautiful images, Tom. You should enter the monthly competitions to get more advice and comments than you'll ever want to see!

Some constructive comments:

1. Think about composition. Having a butterfly dead centre in the middle of the pic doesn't always work for me (see the Small Tort image). It would look much better of the photo were cropped (as per the "rule of thirds") and, if necessary, rotate the image to make the butterfly look as if it's about to fly into an open area.

2. With regard to the Comma - a less-cluttered background would improve things - by using less depth-of-field.

Cheers,

- Pete

[Tom Wade]

Thanks for the comments Pete and Denise,

On a technical note how do I upload a larger image?

I have seen much larger images on the forum and uploaded mine by copying a pixel size (800 wide x ) from an image on the forum, reducing the original in photoshop and then importing it but they have turnd out pretty small.

Is there a recomended image size for the forum and for the photo competitions or is there a maximum size that can't be exceeded?

I looked on the forum for a basic guide to importing images but didn't find anything, so worked on the same basis I have used when uploading photos to Birdguides and it worked.

I have a lot of images to process now so should be able to put something in the monthly photo competion soon.

Thanks again

Tom

[Lee Hurrell]

Fantastic shot of the Comma Tom, really like that one.
Cheers
Lee

[Pete Eeles]

On a technical note how do I upload a larger image?

You can't if you upload to UKB (the max is 800 x 800). The "larger" images you sometimes see are when a member hosts their images on another website and uses the [IMG] tag to reference them. The disadvantage of this, and the reason we use thumbnails, it to allow pages to be loaded more quickly.

Cheers,

- Pete

[marcel]

I thought this would be a good topic to jump into as well!
only picked up the photography hobby again after my recent studies.
Have a nikon d2x, which was lying idle for a year or so, but decided to focus on wildlife photography, and bought a nikon 105 mm F2.8G lens with the standard 18-70 mm zoom I had, got bitten by the butterfly bug!! made some attempts! live in republic of ireland (dutch by origin) learnt a lot from tips on this site hope to contribute in future, my first spotted wood sunning on side of holiday home
marcel

[Denise]

Hi Marcel and welcome to UKB.
Smashing Speckled Wood. Hope to see you here again.

Denise