Week 7 - Shooting Outdoors

So the topic is "shooting outdoors," but the assignment was to shoot macro (super close up). I don't actually have a specific macro lens, so I had to make do... I zoomed in as close as I could, and then (more for my own curiousity) cropped in as close as I could to see what happened... in chatting online with others on my photo board, someone mentioned that putting an SLR on "macro" mode doesn't really *do* anything; it just sets the aperture as large as possible, making a shallow DoF.
I also have a little point and shoot Olympus, so I tried the same shot utilizing the macro mode that's built in to the camera, and without macro turned on, just as zoomed in (optical) as I could go.

From my SLR, SOOC for composition
Image shot at f/4.5, ISO 800, 18-70mm @ 70mm


And that same image, just cropped in to get a truer "macro" look


Here's the same set-up shot in Auto (non-macro) mode with my Olympus (notice that the flash fired, darkening the background and putting quite a bit of distracting glare on the highlight points... this is the only image of the three posted here that had flash)
Image shot at f/5.4, ISO 320, 18.4mm


SOOC from my Olympus point and shoot, set to Macro mode
Image shot at f/2.7, ISO 64, 4.6mm



And again, the same image cropped down


It's hard to choose which image I think is "better," I really like the background blurring on the SLR shot, but the P&S shoot was able to get closer in... until I'm able to save my pennies for a true macro lens, I'll have to pick and choose which option shown here better suits my situation!