Photo Answers
Exasperated by exposure settings? Nonplussed by ND filters? Send your technique and camera questions to digitalcamera@futurenet.com
Our resident expert Andrew James is on hand to fix every query and question
Macro improvement
QI’ve bought a macro lens to shoot small insects, but I really struggle to find subjects and get sharp images. How I can improve my success rate? Tony Hall
AWith a macro lens, Tony, you are opening up a whole world of opportunity; but because you are focusing so close on
everything, you also have to make sure your technique is perfect, otherwise any little faults will show. To find insects, molluscs and spiders, look no further than the back garden or a local wood. Hunt around the vegetation, close to ponds or under rocks, and you’ll soon discover lots of interesting subjects. I’d suggest you get started with something that doesn’t move too fast: that will give you time to experiment with focusing, depth-of-field and composition.
Even things like a humble garden snail can provide you with a great target. The one shown above was just photographed on a damp morning in my back garden as it was exploring a patio table. The macro lens has really brought out the incredible texture on the body. You get very limited sharpness with macro photography, so you have to decide where the main point of focus should be. For the snail, I focused on the front of its head so its main antenna was sharp, but even at f/8 you can see how the other antenna and its shell aren’t sharp.
When you move onto faster-moving subjects, like damselflies or butterflies, pick a still day; set your shutter speed as fast as possible to avoid camera shake; and avoid shooting in the middle of the day, when your subject is probably most active.
Finally, always think about the background and how it impacts on the subject. Clean, diffused backgrounds will mean the subject stands out.
Levelling off
QI usually ‘level up’ an image in Photoshop to ensure a full range of tones from black to white, but some images seem to look better with gaps at the end of the histogram. Am I doing something wrong? Dave Wren
APulling in the Shadows and Highlights sliders to meet the histogram in the Levels palette is the standard method to ensure a full range of tones and give a photograph a healthy dose of contrast – but there are occasions when this doesn’t give the results you’re after.
One is when there genuinely are no true blacks or whites in the image, such as in a misty, low-contrast scene. The solution here is to gently adjust levels by eye, and avoid degrading the image by forcing too
much contrast on it. Another common example is when pure blacks and whites are present, but occupy such a small area that the pixels don’t show up on the histogram graph.
On the example image, the Levels histogram appears to have gaps, but zooming in to the image reveals that genuine blacks and whites are present in the figure’s hair, clothing and camera. An easy solution is to use the black and white eyedropper tools in the Levels palette to set black and white points on the very darkest and brightest areas.