Help. Aside from photo stacking how do I get more in focus

[JBW]

I keep this rose bush to help my humility. It beats me every time.

Sony Alpha a 58 ~ Tamron 90 mm 272E ~ ISO 100 ~ F/14 ~ 0.4s ~ Natural Light

[billtils]

Brian, I suppose the full version of the question is "Aside from photo stacking how do I get more in focus, keeping this view", as one obvious answer is move the camera and/or rose so that the flower head is parallel to the sensor plane. I suspect if you did that exactly then the resulting shot would lose a lot of interest, but you could try a few "in-betweeners" and see if they work.

[Werner]

Rising the F-number while using a tripod will increase DOF.
But you know that already, I guess.
Beautyful rose btw.

[JBW]

Rising the F-number while using a tripod will increase DOF.
But you know that already, I guess.
Beautyful rose btw.

Used a tripod and F/16 is as high as I can go without degradation. It is jut so deep and small.

[JBW]

Brian, I suppose the full version of the question is "Aside from photo stacking how do I get more in focus, keeping this view", as one obvious answer is move the camera and/or rose so that the flower head is parallel to the sensor plane. I suspect if you did that exactly then the resulting shot would lose a lot of interest, but you could try a few "in-betweeners" and see if they work.

Would work if the rose had straight sides but it's very roundish.

[DanK]

Brian,

If this is the view you want (and it's a nice perspective!), then there is no magic: you either close down the aperture or stack. If I were you, I would stack, since you are already using a tripod and the flower won't move.

I suspect you could close the aperture a bit more, although not a great deal. When I was first starting macro work and didn't know how to stack, I played around with small apertures. What I found is that at relatively small sizes of the final image, the degradation from diffraction was sometimes less important than the impression of sharpness from greater depth of field. It depends on the flower; some have fine detail that you would want to preserve, like pollen on anthers, while others aren't harmed as much by a bit of softening. the flower I usually use as an example is the one below, which does have fine detail. I shot it at f/20.

However, even at f/20, your rose is so deep that I think you would still find DOF less than you want.

Dan

[billtils]

Brian, Is there any special reason why you don't want to stack in this instance? Or were you asking out of general curiosity?

[JBW]

Brian, Is there any special reason why you don't want to stack in this instance? Or were you asking out of general curiosity?

I was shooting out doors and even though I secured the rose there is usually enough of a breeze to move the rose.

[JBW]

Brian,

If this is the view you want (and it's a nice perspective!), then there is no magic: you either close down the aperture or stack. If I were you, I would stack, since you are already using a tripod and the flower won't move.

I suspect you could close the aperture a bit more, although not a great deal. When I was first starting macro work and didn't know how to stack, I played around with small apertures. What I found is that at relatively small sizes of the final image, the degradation from diffraction was sometimes less important than the impression of sharpness from greater depth of field. It depends on the flower; some have fine detail that you would want to preserve, like pollen on anthers, while others aren't harmed as much by a bit of softening. the flower I usually use as an example is the one below, which does have fine detail. I shot it at f/20.

However, even at f/20, your rose is so deep that I think you would still find DOF less than you want.

Dan

At F/20 my camera lens combo is seriously degraded. Maybe I could get a shot like this if I got really lucky at F/16.

[odds]

Brian,

Tilting the focus plane relative to the sensor plane may help. It does not give "more" in focus, but placing the thin DOF plane approximately parallel to the top plane of the rose, would present the flower differently. Tilt requires more gear though, like a tilt lens or an add on tilt mechanism, or a perhaps a larger format "technical" camera. This CiC article probably explains this better than I can: https://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tu...ft-lenses2.htm

I can see why you want more in focus, on the other hand I think you did pretty good with a single shot and a regular straight lens.

--
Odd S.

[Wavelength]

marvelous rose

[Mike Buckley]

I'll state the obvious alternative only because it hasn't been mentioned: Increase the distance between the camera and the subject sufficiently to get everything in focus. Then crop to fill the frame with the subject.

[DanK]

I'll state the obvious alternative only because it hasn't been mentioned: Increase the distance between the camera and the subject sufficiently to get everything in focus. Then crop to fill the frame with the subject.

But does this actually work?

Shooting from a longer distance and not cropping will increase depth of field. However, cropping and magnifying the image to compensate will magnify the circle of confusion. Won't that compensate, and bring the DOF back close to what it was to begin with?

[Stagecoach]

I'll state the obvious alternative only because it hasn't been mentioned: Increase the distance between the camera and the subject sufficiently to get everything in focus. Then crop to fill the frame with the subject.

But does this actually work?

Shooting from a longer distance and not cropping will increase depth of field. However, cropping and magnifying the image to compensate will magnify the circle of confusion. Won't that compensate, and bring the DOF back close to what it was to begin with?

Yes, it works.

I posted the below image some time ago in another thread when this was previously discussed.

Each shot was taken at 1/60, f/22, the left hand one filled the frame and for the right hand one I recall moving the camera back the distance that would double the DoF that filled about 50% of the frame. The right hand one was then cropped to be framed as the left one.

There are of course limitations as to how far you can crop depending upon final use of the image and IQ that is acceptable.

[DanK]

Very interesting. I had to try this. I just did a very quick test--no time tonight to be really careful. This first test is consistent with yours--it shows some improvement from moving back and cropping, but not a huge one. Comparing the uncropped version of the second image, it's clear that the cropping does exacerbate the blur, but apparently not enough to offset the impact of shooting from farther back. It looks like the DOF differs less than the rate at which blur increases outside that range is faster in the original shot, but that doesn't make intuitive sense to me. I don't understand the math well enough--have to find time to mull it over.

Original:



Shot from farther back and cropped:

[TonyW]

Dan, what you say is correct except the usual advice is that what you lose in cropping is less than what you gain from a greater distance. The net benefit is not great though especially when you factor in the loss of resolution.

My attempts at flowers have been pretty bad. One hypothesis I have is that with a flower like that you have one predominant colour so that it is easy to blow out the exposure of that colour even when the exposure averaged over all colours looks right and I think the camera only uses the average. This has nothing to do with DOF of course but it does affect the definition.

[Mike Buckley]

This stuff is being made a lot more difficult than I think it needs to be. Imagine capturing a photo when the subject is too small to fill the frame and then printing the photo using the same composition that was captured. To improve the composition, cut away the excess portion of the print so the subject now fills the frame. That's essentially what is being done when cropping before printing or displaying the image online.

As Grahame mentioned, there will be limitations depending on how the final image is going to be used, depending on the quality of the captured image and depending on the requirements regarding quality of the final image. However, considering that Brian asked how the entire subject can be kept in focus without using focus stacking and without using a smaller aperture, it definitely works. It works regardless of the capture technology being used, subject of course to the limitations. Considering that there is no photo without limitations, I see this as a practical solution.

[rpcrowe]

I expect that your point of focus was about 1/3 of the way into the flower...

[Cogito]

Brian, whatever camera+lens you use, it won't be as effective as your eyes. All of the responses here indicate that maybe you're after a dream..... As far as your rose is concerned, listen to Mike and back off a couple of inches.
This is a crap image but it's mine and I reckon that all that needs to be in focus is in focus. And that at f2.

[DanK]

This stuff is being made a lot more difficult than I think it needs to be. Imagine capturing a photo when the subject is too small to fill the frame and then printing the photo using the same composition that was captured. To improve the composition, cut away the excess portion of the print so the subject now fills the frame. That's essentially what is being done when cropping before printing or displaying the image online.

That's not all there is to it. When one crops, one ends up with a smaller image. If you want to display at the same size, you have to enlarge. And enlarging makes blur more apparent. This is the same math behind something you described a few days ago: enlarging the image on the LCD of your camera to find out whether things are sufficiently sharp. The more you enlarge, the more apparent the lack of sharpness becomes.

This is one of the inherent ambiguities of DOF. DOF is not a property of a file; it's a property of an image enlarged to a given size and viewed from a given distance.

I think what Tony wrote is probably the key--that you gain more from backing away than you lose from enlarging--but I haven't worked through the math.