First animal pics
Discussion
Decided to try my hand at composing some animal pics last weekend when a kind Froggy decided to be an incredibly willing model 
couple of the better ones below. First one I'm really happy with - I'd like the focus to have been a little deeper so his rear end was sharper, but all in all considering this is no SLR quality camera, I'm really quite chuffed! Second one, I'm happy with the composition (not that I had a lot of choice, he was getting bored) but it's a bit over-exposed, might have to try photoshop to make it a bit better, thoughts please!
couple of the better ones below. First one I'm really happy with - I'd like the focus to have been a little deeper so his rear end was sharper, but all in all considering this is no SLR quality camera, I'm really quite chuffed! Second one, I'm happy with the composition (not that I had a lot of choice, he was getting bored) but it's a bit over-exposed, might have to try photoshop to make it a bit better, thoughts please! Frogs seem to be pretty patient and willing models. A friend of mine has a garden pond where they're quite happy to be picked up and repositioned by hand ! Unfortunately there's a lot of detritus on the water surface in the second shot which would distract from the frog even if it was correctly exposed. I'd say the first one is over-exposed too but you may be able to recover that a bit in Photoshop, though I'd try to re-shoot with 1 stop less exposure if you can dial it in on your camera.
Point of focus is correct on the eye so no complaints there, background is nicely out of focus too so it doesn't distract from the subject. The exif data says you were in normal program mode, are you able to switch to aperture priority mode with the camera ? If so, then shooting with a smaller aperture would get more of the frog's rear end looking sharp. You might also be able to achieve this in a landscape or macro mode if aperture priority is not available.
The shadow pattern on the rock looks like it might be from a trellis fence, if you can find a way of removing it then you could have a bar-room claim to have spent hours hunting the frog in the wild !
Point of focus is correct on the eye so no complaints there, background is nicely out of focus too so it doesn't distract from the subject. The exif data says you were in normal program mode, are you able to switch to aperture priority mode with the camera ? If so, then shooting with a smaller aperture would get more of the frog's rear end looking sharp. You might also be able to achieve this in a landscape or macro mode if aperture priority is not available.
The shadow pattern on the rock looks like it might be from a trellis fence, if you can find a way of removing it then you could have a bar-room claim to have spent hours hunting the frog in the wild !
te51cle said:
Frogs seem to be pretty patient and willing models. A friend of mine has a garden pond where they're quite happy to be picked up and repositioned by hand ! Unfortunately there's a lot of detritus on the water surface in the second shot which would distract from the frog even if it was correctly exposed. I'd say the first one is over-exposed too but you may be able to recover that a bit in Photoshop, though I'd try to re-shoot with 1 stop less exposure if you can dial it in on your camera.
Point of focus is correct on the eye so no complaints there, background is nicely out of focus too so it doesn't distract from the subject. The exif data says you were in normal program mode, are you able to switch to aperture priority mode with the camera ? If so, then shooting with a smaller aperture would get more of the frog's rear end looking sharp. You might also be able to achieve this in a landscape or macro mode if aperture priority is not available.
The shadow pattern on the rock looks like it might be from a trellis fence, if you can find a way of removing it then you could have a bar-room claim to have spent hours hunting the frog in the wild !
Point of focus is correct on the eye so no complaints there, background is nicely out of focus too so it doesn't distract from the subject. The exif data says you were in normal program mode, are you able to switch to aperture priority mode with the camera ? If so, then shooting with a smaller aperture would get more of the frog's rear end looking sharp. You might also be able to achieve this in a landscape or macro mode if aperture priority is not available.
The shadow pattern on the rock looks like it might be from a trellis fence, if you can find a way of removing it then you could have a bar-room claim to have spent hours hunting the frog in the wild !
Many Thanks for the thoughts
bit odd that it says it was in normal mode as this was all done in Macro mode, aperture priority 
The shadow pattern is actually from the reeds in the background, Froggy is sat on the stone edging of the pond they are growing in! I hadn't noticed till your comment how uniform looking the shadows are, a lesson in itself. More interesting is the difference in appearance now I'm back on the home PC - as you say, the first one looks a tad overexposed as well, whereas on my works PC it looks just right. I'm running the same colour matching profiles on both machines and the monitors are very similar spec so somethings gone awry. Point taken about the detritus, must switch the circulation pump off next time so I can keep the floaters away.
Any more constructive thoughts gratefully received, only way I'll learn!
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