hairy scary spider

[aussie girl]

Hi everyone. I took a few photos of this spider that I found curled up in a leaf on a hibiscus bush. At first I thought it was a dried up flower bud, and actually touched the leaf it was on!!!
I set up my camera with my tripod and used my 70-300mm lens. I cranked the lens all the way out and then used manual focus to try and get it focused properly. I used my remote control to fire the shutter as the camera seemed to move about quite a bit if I manually set off the shutter. I think with the lens out so far, it makes the camera move more on the tripod because of the weight of the extended lens.
Anyway, even after using tripod, remote etc, I have noticed, once I brought the photos up in the computer that the spider is still blurred. Should I have cranked the lens in a bit, and then moved the tripod closer??? what it the secret to really good clear closeups??
70086

[jgknight]

Not to bad but the problem may be slight camera movement which could be caused by a few different things.

1. You said the tripod was a little unsteady with the big lens on. This can be a problem. Was the camera attached to the tripod or was the lens attached to the tripod? Some longer lenses have a special lens mount which helps to balance the weight.

2. When using a tripod, always make sure one of the legs is pointing in the same direction as the lens. This helps to distribute the weigh better and give extra support to the lens.

3. Using the camera in the mirror lock up position. When taking photos through an SLR, when you activate the shutter, the mirror has to lift up out of the way before the shutter opens. This can cause vibrations especially at slow shutter speeds. If you are not sure how to do this, your camera manual will explain what to do. When you are ready to do your exposure, the first click will bring the mirror up and the second click will take the exposure.

4. When using a 300mm lens, the smallest movement or vibration during exposure can result in un-sharp pictures. Always use a fast shutter speed to try to overcome this problem.

[aussie girl]

Thanks for your tips John. It is really the first time that I have used my tripod. Have no idea what position the legs were in, but having one pointed in the direction of the lens makes sense Duh!! lol
I had the tripod attached to the camera. It has a plate that screws onto the camera body and then this clips into the tripod head (Manfrotto tripod) I noticed that when I released the lock on the trigger of the tripod head and got the camera into the position that I thought was right, and then locked off the trigger, the "frame" that I had set up dropped down slightly, so I am assuming that it was the weight of the camera/lens that made this occur. The lens does not have anywhere to mount it to a tripod.

My camera has live view on it, and I know that when you use live view, the mirror flips up, so that you can see what would have been on the view finder on the LCD display screen. but I am not sure if, when you push the shutter button with the camera in live view, whether the mirror comes down again first.

Now, looking up stuff in my camera manual - where the heck have I put that manual???? At least I can get a copy of it from the disc that came with the camera - and yes, I know where the disc is :)