Inching Upward Toward Mediocrity

Some new gadgetry arrived today, so I made some effort to shoot some more macro shots.

I was interested in focus stacking and focus bracketing. I should cover these things first.

Macro teachers on the web bamboozled me into thinking all I needed were a camera, a diffuser, and some patience. Not really true. You can get plenty of good pictures without a ton of equipment, but there are things you just will not be able to do, and the smaller you go, the more obvious this is.

With the lens I’m using on my APS-C Sony, the depth of field is something like 1 mm. That is small. It means that if I’m shooting a flower that measures an inch in my sagittal plane, I’m only getting about 1/25 of it, in terms of depth, in focus. That is no good.

A lot of people take shots that focus on one part of a small subject and give up on the rest, or they settle for low magnification. That’s okay, but sometimes you want to see more.

The way to get more depth of field, assuming you can’t back up enough to get it naturally, is to combine images using a computer. This is focus stacking. You take multiple images, changing the in-focus plane in steps. Then the computer discards the fuzzy stuff and puts the rest together in one sharp image.

How do you get all those images?

First of all, you have to use a tripod. Forget doing it the old-fashioned way. You will move around and get shots that are not the same.

Second, you can forget changing the focus between shots manually. It’s just too hard.

I thought in-camera focus bracketing might be the way to go. It looked that way when I read about it. It doesn’t work.

When you make your camera do focus bracketing, you push the button, and your camera shoots more than one shot, changing the focus between shots. The problem with this is that if you’re doing macro, not just “taking pictures of small things,” the camera will not change focus in small enough increments.

It turns out you need to move the camera, using a device that has a micrometer screw. That device is called a focusing rail. You mount it on your tripod, you line up your shot, and then you take numerous shots, leaving the focus alone. This moves the focused plane along your subject, giving you the desired material for focus stacking.

I got a pretty good tripod, and it arrived today. I got a geared head for it because geared heads hold stuff more reliably and allow for easy tilt adjustments around several axes. I found out how to make my A7IV do focus bracketing, and then I took pictures. I merged them in software, and the results are about what you would expect if I just held the camera and hoped for the best. Bad.

It isn’t going to work. I’m not going to fool with it. I’m getting a rail.

The tripod is excellent. I’m not saying it’s a great tripod, because it seems like any piece of equipment that qualifies to be called “great” by real photographers had to be made of spun platinum and cost over $50,000. I believe it’s excellent for my plans, given what I am willing to spend.

It’s a Vanguard Pro 2+, or something like that. Carbon fiber for weight reduction.

It holds a lot of weight, and you can move the legs and the central column in ways that will put your camera just about anywhere, solidly.

Using the tripod for the shot above was heaven on Earth. So much less aggravation than an Amazon Basics.

If you want to photograph a mushroom on the ground from 8 inches away, this tripod will hold your camera right where it needs to be. That’s pretty neat.

I got a geared head for it, and that’s also fun, but I think I could have lived with a regular ball head, which has a ball-and-socket joint you tighten with a screw.

I think I blew around $350. It’s not a childish splurge. It’s me, being a grown-up about photography. You can’t nickel-and-dime everything. You can’t buy a nice camera and nice lenses and then cheap out on everything else.

My $20-$25 tripods are amazing for what they cost, but you can’t put a real camera and a real lens on one and expect things to go smoothly. The weight is just too much. They’re wonderful for things like smartphones and Gopros.

I am getting a mid-range focusing rail, and with that done, I should be in good shape to do some photography. I am eager to see the results. The rail goes on top of the geared head, under the camera.

Pushing the button to take a shot is nerve-wracking, because it takes a lot of force and moves the camera. I’m going to be using remotes instead. I would stay away from Canon and Sony remotes. For one thing, they are back in the Stone Age when it comes to batteries. They use coin batteries that are a pain to replace, and my OEM Canon remote actually has a tiny Phillips screw you have to remove. Insane. I got rechargeable remotes from a company called Aodelan. I also have a tiny Smallrig tripod that has a rechargeable Sony-compatible remote in the handle.

I’m not using a phone app to pop the shutter because NOT EVERYTHING IN LIFE SHOULD BE DONE THROUGH A SMARTPHONE. Man, I wish millennials would understand this. I’ll bet I have over 100 apps, and in a sane world, maybe 35 of them would not exist. The 21st-century obsession with forcing people to do everything on phones is incredibly stupid. A 50-year-old who can use a desktop is almost godlike compared to a millennial who can’t.

I’ll bet there are kids out there writing term papers with their thumbs.

Well. That’s not true. They tell ChatGPT to do it, and they go on their illiterate, merry ways. Oh well; 6-7, right?

I guess I’ll want a real diffuser eventually. The fabric job I have is not very good. The diffusing part is white fabric, and the flash shines through it. This would be fine if there was any distance between the flash and the fabric, but it’s very close to it, so I think I’m probably getting a very localized light source. I think it’s a lot like wrapping your underwear around the flash. The light isn’t direct, but I don’t think it is spread out effectively. Could be wrong.

Diffusers are cheap, so no worries there.

Looking back, it’s a wonder I ever got any nice shots of small things.

My conclusions are always subject to change, because I am learning as I do, and I knew almost nothing to start with. I think I’m right about focus bracketing, but who knows what knowledge tomorrow may bring?