The Pain and Pleasure of Macro Photography
As I sat waiting for Blue Origin’s maiden launch of New Glenn (T-minus 3h 42m as I write this), I thought I’d make a blog entry about my journey with macro photography. When I picked up my first (and, so far, only) macro lens about a year ago, I thought I’d immediately be cranking out some incredible, highly-details shots of some interesting subjects.
But when I took my first pics with it, I was terribly disappointed - everything was blurry, the depth of field (DoF) was razor-thin, and nothing looked good. Ditto with my second outing. And my third. I was getting frustrated.
Granted, I’m not a professional. Nor am I an expert. At best, I might be an advanced beginner. But, darn it, I know how to take a steady and sharp picture! No matter how hard I tried, though, my results were poor-to-garbage. What gives?
This is one of my very few, mostly successful, handheld macro shots. Even so, it could be better.
So to the University of YouTube I went. One of the first things I noticed was that everyone was using a tripod. Sure, I own a tripod… but I hate using it. I’m very much an impatient photographer, which usually doesn’t pair well with a tripod. However, the evidence was clear - a tripod was necessary.
Secondly, with the DoF being so thin - even at tight apertures like f/11 - multiple shots at different focus spots would be needed and later blended. I was familiar with exposure stacking, but I’d never focus stacked before. This was new to me… but it represented something to add to my photographer’s toolkit.
Armed with this new knowledge, I headed out to get some great shots of the ever-impressive subject of mushrooms. So I did my best with picking different focal planes to try to get enough shots to form a sharp, final stack. The results were… better. Not great… but better.
Still not as sharp as I’d like.
Obviously there was more to learn. So I watched more videos. And then more videos. Eventually - and to my embarrassment - I discovered my my camera had the ability to shoot a continuous set of stepped focus shots for later stacking. This would speed up my workflow considerably.
With this newly-learned information, I set out on another foray into the mountains for the photogenic fungus. After some trial-and-error, I think I nailed the process - I was getting sharp shots throughout the depth of the subject. Win!
Happily importing these pics into Lightroom and Photoshop, I eagerly anticipated creating some incredible and sharp images. Kicking off the process, I knew - I KNEW - I was going to get something amazing! Annnnnddddd… meh. Sure, my shots were sharp… nothing wrong there. But Photoshop did a mediocre job of stacking the shots.
Notice the blue on parts of the mushroom’s cap - that’s what I need to figure out how to fix.
So now I’m at a place where I either need to adjust my workflow a bit (and change some camera settings) to get a deeper DoF, or dig into Photoshop and learn how to muck with the layer masks to get the best results. Or both. However, knowing me, I’m probably too lazy to go deeper into Photoshop.
Fellow photogs, what do you do when taking macro shots? What’s your secret to getting sharp shots throughout the subject? What wisdom can you impart?
As always, thanks for reading!
This level of subject sharpness is my goal.
