• Your focus is good, but not nessesarily where you intended. Use a single point if your are not already.
  • Your shutter speed for a 50mm on a cropped body and no IS is a little to low. If you are using a flash, then I do not see a reason for the shutter to be so slow. Rule of thumb is shutter speed w/o IS should be 1/(focal length), and on a croped body, that equates to 1/80 sec. But the faster the better.
  • Get low (camera resting on the surface the frog is on) and focus on the eyes. If other things are out of focus, but the eyes are good, then it still looks good.
  • Set up on a tripod if you can and the go to live view at 10x, manually focus, and shoot with a remote. That will get you the sharpest shot. To get as low as possible, flip the column to lower the camer upside down right to the ground.
  • The closer you get, the thinner the DOF. If your lens is back or front focusing, then it is going to be tough going. That is why Live View at 10x and manual focus is prefered (must be on tripod however).


Here is an example of one on our front door window (I rotated in post). This was at night, so I used a 580 flash and hand held with 100mm macro IS. The eyes are in focus, but the rest is not, but it still looks OK. Eyes are very important... if they are not in focus, everything looks off.


Treefrog -1001 by westmichigan, on Flickr

Hope that helps.

Pat