I love the effects of some extreme close-up views and decided to give Macro a try. From last June through the early fall, 2010, I conducted Macro tests. My equipment: Canon EOS 20D with a Canon Macro lens EF 100 mm 1:2.8 IS, using a remote shutter release, mounted on a Slik AMT tripod
The closer you are to a subject, the shallower the depth of field. To try to “fix” that, I used Photoshop, version CS4. I took multiple shots of the same subject, each shot with a different focus point. For each shot I created a separate layer, selected all layers, auto-aligned, and auto-blended them.
Essential help came from iStock contributor Kevin Jay on the site’s photography forum. I learned:
The best light is bright and even; avoid direct sunlight. I shot indoors, placing the subject in front of a window and away from direct sunlight. Sometimes I used a light box under the subject, or a swatch of black velvet; or I painted the subject with a flashlight.
F 16 is the smallest aperture you can use and still get sharp focus. Lock up the camera’s mirror for exposure times slower than 1/60 of a second. When mounted on a tripod, the camera does not need its image stabilizer. If you leave it on when using a tripod, the result can be soft images as the lens spins and fights against a still platform.
Except for the single Macro photograph seen here, each resulting image had something wrong: a blemish on a petal, overexposure, underexposure, blurriness, flat and dull lighting, unintended see-through effects, and/or poor color balance. The worst was posterization in a few images, which can be corrected by shooting and processing in Raw. Raw has more color flexibility than JPEG. I haven’t gotten to Raw yet.
From the beginning, I asked, “What can I do with Macro that I don’t see anyone else doing?” I like to capture what looks like an otherworldly environment. Come spring when the flowers bloom again I’ll give Macro another try.
