Your opinion? Night butterfly

[Greg]

Hi,
I saw a night butterfly, static, so I tried for the first time the Focus bracketing with a tripod.

Stack of 50 pictures with Helicon Focus Method C

I know the result is not very good , i don't know why i'm bad on stacking ...

 

[Baenki]

I like the monochrome that's going on here. It's a good picture but not perfectly sharp, but that's most likely because you've got a living subject there, so even the slightest movement of the insect will probably throw off alignment. Do you shoot on a tripod or handheld? 1/5 is a pretty long exposure, so you might even get some motion blur in every photo.

Additionally do you use focus bracketing or a focusing rail? Maybe your step size per image is too big? For my pictures I found that the smaller the step size i use and the more photos i take when bracketing, the sharper the final result will get.

Edit: Just saw that you have given those infos.

 

[Chavezshutter]

Greg It's pretty good, stacking is tricky at any time so I dont try it on live subjects. The only other piece of advice i can add is to watch the angle of the stack, in this photo your focus is travelling through the moth's body in an angle which may have made the stack's focus more difficult to get right. My stacking need practice too, out of all the stacks i make i only get about 50% right

 

[Greg]

Thx for your comments, yes the insect is alive but didn't move. I just discover focus bracketing function on my camera, I tried many pictures but the result was bad. Next time I'll try a full brackting with more picture with a step 1 or 2. Here i didn't get too much light ...

 

[Helix_2648]

Baenki gave you already some good tips. I would first of all change the perspective to get the whole moth on your picture. Apart from that I would use an additional light to increase the shutter speed. Do you wanted to have the whole moth in focus? Or only parts of it? I'm just asking because of some blurry spots at the end of the moth.

Have you checked the white balance? The picture looks a bit to warm / orange to me...

Maybe you can have a look to an ambient light? Mine costs 50€ and with this you can even adjust the color temperature!