Least Skipper Butterfly on Zinnia Flower. Note which parts of the image are more and less in sharp, or nearly sharp focus. © All Rights Reserved
Same set up as above. Note: On a sunny day, you have the potential option of shooting certain subjects either front or back-lighted (I'll detail this in a future article).
Every detail of the fawns head is well focused ... and the featureless background makes his profile pop although his features are relatively soft.
American Sycamore leaf backlighted.
Black-eyed Susan; this just makes the case ... barely. If the deep burgundy flower at the right background were any more well-focused, it would, IMO, become an unwanted distraction. For that reason, I chose to post it ... as a not-so-great example. The flowers at the bottom right are even more distracting.
In photography, the term Depth-of-Field is ...
"the distance between the nearest and the furthest objects that give an image judged to be in focus in a camera"
Too technical?
How 'bout ... the distance in front of and behind the object(s) on which you focus that will also contain objects that appear in focus.
A few things to keep in mind when composing a shot with regard to depth-of-field:
1) If anything stands in front of or behind your main macro image, the sharper its focus, the more it will distract and detract from your subject; if you cannot change position or crop the distraction(s) out of your image (so that it does not appear in your viewfinder), a shallow depth-of-field may save it.
2) "Macro" photography, in its strictest sense, refers to the recording of objects that are no bigger than the piece of film, or the sensor on which they're recorded. More recently, it generally refers to close-up photography of (usually) isolated subjects.
3) You DON'T NEED TO BUY AN EXPENSIVE MACRO LENS TO GET GOOD CLOSE-UP IMAGES! A zoom lens (180mm and up) in many situations will get you close enough to flowers, etc. to make an effective picture.
4) For the most shallow (least deep?) depth-of-field, use the widest aperture on your lens.
5) Use a tripod.
6) Regardless of your lens or aperture, optically, the further your lens is from a subject, the more the depth of field increases; the opposite is also true ... closer = shallower.
7) If your camera has both a DIGITAL and an OPTICAL ZOOM ... use the OPTICAL! Why? Because the digital zoom grabs only a portion of what's being recorded on your sensor, then enlarges it ... same effect as if you're painting a wall and try to cover it with a thimble full of paint rather than a gallon. The digital zoom has to create pixels to fill in the gaps it creates (interpolation) and those pixels will not be as well integrated over the whole.
Now ... there's a lot of stuff here, but it's good, useful stuff. Let it sink in then I'll begin showing example images.
Promise you will return.
Promise!
© All Rights Reserved/Article and Images/A. Macarthur
