how deep is your field

Probably the most technically challenging thing about macro photography is getting adequate depth of field, the amount of the image in sharp focus, for your subject.

 

It’s just a simple fact of macro life that using a macro lens placed reasonably close to your subject will result in a depth of field that’s shallow at best and razor thin at worst.

 

There are two ways around this:

- stop the lens's aperture down to a smaller opening

- employ focus bracketing.

The trouble with the former is that even stopping down to even tiny apertures like f16 or f22, depth of field really doesn’t increase that much, and there is also the risk of the image being softer due to the effects of diffraction.  Oh, and also drastically reducing the amount of light entering the lens meaning a longer shutter duration (and possible motion blur) or increasing ISO (and possible noise being introduced into the image).

 

this longhorn beetle remained still long enough to get a multi-shot focus bracket, stacked using Helicon Focus

Focus bracketing (taking a series of images focused at varying distances from the subject) would appear to overcome the depth of field issue but comes with its own set of problems.

 

Firstly, if the subject is moving, either under its own steam or being blown in the wind, then stacking software will have issues aligning the images into one.  And secondly there is the fact that you need to overcome the difficulties of shooting those multiple images, especially if hand-holding the camera.

There’s also the small matter of acquiring some specialist stacking software, the best of which come at a cost.  I have a license for Helicon Focus, which costs me around £40 a year – not expensive but another cost to factor in – and also the time invested to learn how to use it properly.

 

Sometimes it’s just possible to get one shot, balancing aperture with ISO to get a fast enough shutter speed while also showing as much of your subject off as possible.

while this froghopper was constantly moving, making only a single shot at a compromised f11 possible

Whatever, and besides those technical and many other hurdles, macro photography is still an awful lot of fun.  And when you do get it just right, well it’s a great feeling.  No matter how the shot was captured!

Here's a montage of my most recent shots: