Study in macro and focal depth...
So, I was fiddling with the camera in the garden one evening this past week, using a 10x macro lens screwed onto my go-to 18-55mm zoom lens. I took a series of photos of a columbine bloom, focusing each time on a different "layer" of the flower as I looked down on it from above.
I'm pretty pleased with the results.
And I realize that I'm making it sound like I just casually strolled out and took four photos and POOF, instant results. It... wasn't really like that. It started with the one on the bottom right, where just the very tips of the spurs are in focus. If you've ever messed with macro photography without a true macro lens, you'll know how tricky it is to find the sweet spot, because the focal depth is a matter of millimeters (maybe it is with a true macro lens, too, but I don't own one yet so I can't say). That one was more or less a lucky shot, to be honest, because it was a breezy day, I was using manual focus (always a challenge when you wear trifocals), and I wasn't using a tripod (I hate fussing with tripods). To make up for all that lack of professionality, I took a LOT of shots--my method is pretty much to take a billion shots until I finally see one in my viewer that give me a sort of fizzy feeling that the shot will be *right*, and usually that feeling holds up when I look at the photo on the computer. I didn't check it on the computer because I didn't want to lose the light and so fairly quickly took the other three, because I had a feeling I knew (more or less--mostly less) what I was doing. And... it turned out I did.
Click on the image to get to Photobucket where you can click the magnifying glass a few times to see it full size.
I'm pretty pleased with the results.
And I realize that I'm making it sound like I just casually strolled out and took four photos and POOF, instant results. It... wasn't really like that. It started with the one on the bottom right, where just the very tips of the spurs are in focus. If you've ever messed with macro photography without a true macro lens, you'll know how tricky it is to find the sweet spot, because the focal depth is a matter of millimeters (maybe it is with a true macro lens, too, but I don't own one yet so I can't say). That one was more or less a lucky shot, to be honest, because it was a breezy day, I was using manual focus (always a challenge when you wear trifocals), and I wasn't using a tripod (I hate fussing with tripods). To make up for all that lack of professionality, I took a LOT of shots--my method is pretty much to take a billion shots until I finally see one in my viewer that give me a sort of fizzy feeling that the shot will be *right*, and usually that feeling holds up when I look at the photo on the computer. I didn't check it on the computer because I didn't want to lose the light and so fairly quickly took the other three, because I had a feeling I knew (more or less--mostly less) what I was doing. And... it turned out I did.
Click on the image to get to Photobucket where you can click the magnifying glass a few times to see it full size.