A Lot of Money, That Is

The macro photography journey continues.

I got me a Laowa lens that was supposed to be fantastic for macro, and I also got real and bought a Sony a6400. I need to quit dividing my time between the Sonyverse and the Canonverse, and it seems pretty clear the Sonyverse is better. I don’t want to have to speak the languages of two manufacturers, because I don’t shoot often enough to keep my memory refreshed. I also got an a6400 because it was time to admit I needed a Sony APS-C camera for travel. I am probably never going to lug the A7IV around the world with its heavy lenses.

Yesterday, I tried shooting a tiny fly on a leaf, and it was frustrating. A Youtube guy said to use focus peaking, which is a weird feature through which cameras guess which parts of an image are in focus and paint them with bright colors in your display. The bug and the leaf lit up, and I thought everything was in focus, but in truth, very little was.

I have been told to use a tripod and try focus stacking. A tripod makes focusing easier. Focus stacking means taking several photos focused at different distances and using computer trickery to merge them into one image that has more stuff in focus than any single source image.

My best tripods cost about $20 and $25, and I got them in about 2004 and 2020
It is not ready for this kind of work. The camera, lens, and flash are light, but the tripod can’t handle the weight. It allows the camera to droop gradually toward the ground. I managed to get some shots, but this tripod has to go.

The tripod was inadequate, but it made focusing a lot easier. I got all sorts of color from the focus peaking. Then I looked at the images, and the depth of field was still no good. I got some gorgeous shots, but the focus was subpar.

I have to get a real tripod. K&F Concepts makes a cheap one that seems to work for some reviewers, and Vanguard makes a more expensive one that appears to be a more solid choice.

I have free Affinity editing software, and I checked to see if it does focus stacking. It does. So now I have to take some appropriate photos and try it out. It is conceivable I could do it with the $25 tripod, but I don’t know yet.

I don’t know if Affinity is good at focus stacking, but if it isn’t, finding something else won’t be hard.

The tripod I used today sometimes held steady long enough for me to fool with camera and flash settings, so I was able to get some okay exposures. That was a big step forward. I have watched tutorials about the flash, but I forget things, so I will have to watch again. It seems to have a mind of its own.

I am getting truly beautiful photos, even if they are seriously flawed, and I’m very gung-ho about macro. I think I’m less than a week away from a few photos that will make me very, very happy.

I’m also going to shoot other stuff. I am used to using a phone or shooting in aperture mode, so my understanding of what really works when I go manual is not what it should be. I have been trying to get good shots of my son before he is so old he gets mad at me and drives home.

Doing all this makes me appreciate phones more. I don’t know who designed my phone so it does such a good job making me look like a great photographer, but he must be a genius.