Smiling Frog

Sandy, I also love the detail you have in the frog's eyes, but since the smile is a very important part of this image I wish it were in focus. Since he is a regular visitor of yours, I would try using a smaller f stop and putting the focus point around maybe his nose to see if you can get both the eyes and the smile in focus. He's a cute frog and I think worth the effort.

I must admit to being a newbie having gotten my first DSLR about 5 months ago. He was a regular every night and I was hoping to shoot him with the Canon 100mm f2.5L lens that I had on order and sure enough, the lens came and the frog stopped showing up. :( At the time, I was obsessed with getting very tack sharp focus on the eyes of various creatures such as this photo of a black crested night heron. I really appreciate you pointing that out in that amazingly, it never even crossed my mind. I went back desperately searching through all of my shots of the frog and sure enough, not one of them has the mouth in focus. :( I am practicing and reading like mad and comments like this will enhance my progress as a photographer. Thanks!

The eyes on both the frog and on the bird are awesome.

Thanks Lucy - that was my mission - to get tack sharp focus on the eyes if I could. I used the depth of field that would highlight the eyes and minimize other details.

Sandy, when I started to photograph birds and wildlife I did just what you are doing. I put my focus point on the eyes to make sure they were sharp. After all, they must be! But I later learned that in order to get both the eyes and beak (or in this case smile) in focus, you have to position the focus point in front of the eyes. It will take practice to learn exactly where to put that focus point and what f stop to use, but you'll get it!

Carol, thanks so much for that interesting tip. I spend a lot of time just shooting in the yard for practice and I will remember that tip and try it out! So much to learn!!

Sandy, you did well to get the eyes in focus. Nice exposure too. Folks have mentioned some good tips in regards to the focus point. I find that between f/11-f/16 is usually necessary to get decent DoF with frog macros, and with flash, this is certainly doable much of the time.

Max

Thanks Max. It's interesting that suggestions give me some thought processes that would not have even occured to me in that I really was totally focused on getting those eyes, but a full focus would not have detracted from them and made for a better photo. This newbie is working hard to make progress!

Great comments already. What an excellent smile!

Thanks Lon, I am just so disappointed that now that I have an L Macro lens, the guy has disappeared. I would have loved to have seen what I could have done with my new Canon 100mm f.28L Macro!