Woohoo!!!

[Pete]

congrats. very nice photo.

 

[JeanLux]

:clap: bravo :clap: Jean

 

[Hera]

Wonderful! Good job.

 

[Clark]

Congrats! Great shot.

Brian, do you use the mirror lockup function?
Thanks.

 

[NYEric]

Congrats.

 

[Brian Monk]

Congrats! Great shot.

Brian, do you use the mirror lockup function?
Thanks.

It depends. For this shot, I was using a combination of natral light, static light, and strobe, so the shutter speed was set somewhere faster than 1/100, so I didn't have to lock up the mirror for this shot. For others, where I need less contrast or have less light, I might lock up if the time is greater than 1 second, but not if it is less. And that is completely arbitrary, BTW. Even with flash and a fast shutter speed, you cold use the mirror lock feature if you wanted to.

 

[Marc]

I'm aware that there is the option to lock the mirror but does it have such a pronounced impact on the sharpness of the picture?

A solid tripod should be able to cope with the tiny bump created by the movement of the mirror in a DSLR?

 

[Brian Monk]

Clark pointed out that I shot this pic at 1/60th, not 1/100 or faster. He was confsed, and so was I. I check my notes, and I did use a tripod for all of these shots. I also bracket my images, and I may have set 1/100th as my primary value, but (to my eye at least) the 1/60th shot was better exposed. My fault for not checking my exif data.

For what it is worth, the "bump" produced by the camera is what produces a loss of sharpness, and that technically cannot be managed by a tripod. On the other hand, I believe it only becomes important at long shtter speeds or with exceptionally close macros of very tiny things.