Agile frog

A close-up portrait of an agile frog (Rana dalmatina), a red frog once common in Europe. This comes from a small wetland area at the foot of low hills nearby Torino, north-western Italy.

What technical feedback would you like if any? Any!

What artistic feedback would you like if any? Any!

Pertinent technical details or techniques: Medium Format digital, 120/2.5 macro, 1/500, f/4.8, ISO 200, hand-held lying in the mud.

You may only download this image to demonstrate post-processing techniques.

Nice image of an interesting little critter.
Great pose and BG.
A wider aperture would have brought more of the frog into focus, but it’s quite nice as is. This might have been a good candidate for stacking, if you could have encouraged the frog to stay still for a bit longer.
I’m not of the school that every tiny part must be tack-sharp - usually much more interesting if NOT all in perfect focus.
Sandy

A lovely frog with a very good “perch”, Antonello. Like Sandy, I think a bit more depth of field would work better. I don’t mind the far side of the frog going out of focus, but I find myself wishing that the entirety of the two near legs were sharp.

A very good composition.

Thanks for the comments Sandy and Dennis! I am not a big fan of focus stacking, but I agree that a higher f/ value would have helped - I agree that having the nearby legs all in focus could be better. On the other hand, the background was not very smooth, and closing the diaphragm further could have popped out some confusion… (and I am not a big fan of artificial backgrounds either… :grin:). Probably, a f/8 o f/11 could have made the job…

Hi Antonello,

I think that you did quite well here and f8 may have given you enough DOF. Crop and BG are good. All this one needs is a little more DOf. Well done…Jim

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Antonello, the frog stands out well from the colors in the background and the moss on the rock. Those colors look good. Your angle of view works very well (worth getting muddy). You seem to be well aware of the trade off in macro of background structure and depth-of-field. I wonder if getting the area at the top of the fore leg sharp would be enough to avoid the feeling to too little dof?

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Mark, thanks! Very interesting suggestion… I tried, and increased sharpness locally on the
upper part of the fore leg, on the “nose”, and a bit on the upper part of the rear leg. Not a huge difference but, I feel, it did reduce a bit the sense of excessively limited dof. Thanks for the hint!

Antonello, you’re right that the changes are subtle, but they do help. From my own work with frog close-ups, their noses often “feel” soft. I guess that’s because they’re smooth and round. I downloaded your frog and tried a touch of burning-in both around the top of the front leg and on the chin/nose. Here’s what I got. It’s also subtle, but by darkening those two areas, they don’t grab quite as much attention. To see the differences between the images, you need to have them open in separate browser windows.

Mark, thanks again! I see your point and I fully agree. From the image I think I see the results only barely, probably you downloaded the first version? But I do see the interest of the suggestion and I have learned a lot. As an old slide-aficionado (mainly 'cause of age, probably), I have always been hesitant in working on specific parts of the image - rather preferring to change the whole-picture settings - but I do see the efficiency of curing specific parts - without changing the overall scene - to create a more pleasant, informative and nevertheless realistic (whatever it means) image. I really appreciate your comments and help!

Antonello: Sorry to be so late to this party but I’m OK with your DOF. The eye is sharp and that’s the most critical feature. Nice find and a fine capture.>=))>

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Antonello: this is a most likable image that could be helped with a bit more dof. The lack of dof certainly doesn’t detract from the image but you might consider it to be icing on the cake. Likely you can apply some local sharpening. Richard

Thanks Richard! I did (moderately) apply some sharpening in the second image, but probably more could be done! All the best, Antonello

I do like the work/repost. This turned out to be instructive. For me, this is what the site is all about.

I do focus stacking a fair amount. It can be a ticky and frustrating business, but the end results can be outstanding, not necessarily because of a created DOF. Having sharp edges makes selecting much easier, even more so if the bg is adequately blurred. The advantage is the opportunity to work on the subject differently than the bg in a separate layer for each.