High meadow flowers.

[Ben Egbert]

I wanted to get a close up of these flowers when I was taking a landscape recently shown. I don't have a close up lens and the best gear I have for this, the 100-400 was at home. So I used my 24-70 at 70mm and nearest focus. This is still a heavy crop and suffers from not enough DOF.

Like to hear any and all advice for such shots short of buying the appropriate gear. It was hand held at a fairly high ISO mostly dues to wind.

 

[JimFox]

I like this flower display Ben. A very nice mix of colors.

I think if you had the 100-400mm with you, you would have been fine? With the 24-70mm at 70mm, yeah cropping might be needed. What aperture did you shoot at?

 

[Ben Egbert]

I was trying for shallow DOF so I used F4, I also had to go to ISO400 and was at 1/50 second hand held so I would have had some issues stopping down a lot. As I said, it was windy. I should have gone up in iso and aperature.

 

[JimFox]

When I was trying some similar shots (Nothing I do very much) recently I found either f5.6 or f8 was my favorite. F8 can still give you that shallow DoF depending on where everything else is at in the frame.

It's a tough one when the wind is blowing, you do need to keep the shutter speed up, if it was windy, 1/50th might have been right on the edge of being fast enough. And yeah, increase the ISO it's why we have it.

 

[AlanLichty]

I like the alpine blooms.

My M.O. for a shot like this with the 100-400mm would be at lest 1/120 sec with f/9 and auto ISO. Not sure what that would get you for the resulting ISO but maybe around 400. I typically go for a focal point a bit more forward from where you have yours set here but that still allows for an OOF background to isolate the subject.

 

[Ben Egbert]

Alan, that's what I would have done with my 100-400 if I would have had it with me.

 

[Eric Gofreed]

complimentary colors and gorgeous too

 

[Douglas Sherman]

You have a great eye, Ben. Now just make sure you have the correct lens with you at all times. If you focus on the closest object to you at f-22 you would have been fine in this image. That 24-70mm lens set at 70mm will do the trick. I used it all of the tie on flower close-ups.