Working on macro for several months now, I have some questions.

Hi all

I have been working with macro for several months now. I have gotten some great shots and some not-so-great shots. That's photography, but the ones that get me are the ones that I can't figure out why they didn't work out.

PRE:

I started shooting on a Canon rebel t6 and a kit lens Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS II (https://www.dpreview.com/products/canon/lenses/canon_18-55_3p5-5p6_is_ii) and hit walls very quickly. The only way I could get the magnification I wanted was with HEAVY cropping afterward. At the same time, I had an iPhone 6s and took some really good macro photos with that, but there was not much resolution to work with. Finally, after a year, I decided that I really did like the kind of macro photos I was getting but wanted to go deeper. So I got an Alpha 7RII, tones of resolution to crop with a good sensor and FF (I don't just do macro) purchased a Tamron 28-75mm F2.8 Di III RXD (https://www.dpreview.com/products/tamron/lenses/tamron_28-75_2p8_di_iii_rxd) to go with it and that's what I'm using now. I know it's not a dedicated macro lens. I'm not made of money. So that's how I got here. Now to the questions.

I seem to have trouble telling exactly what is in focus on my camera and when it's not I have a hard time figuring out why. Camera movement? to shallow of a DOF? genuinely out of focus? I shoot manual 80% And have turned on focus peaking to help, which it does but not enough apparently. I can find where the DOF is but in the center of that it is still not perfectly clear. Below is one of the images I took recently, I didn't spend as much time setting it up as I should, but I wanted the little stems in focus, (blue circle, Image 1) and clearly missed the mark. The red zone seems to be my focus range with the inner red circle the clearest part. That being said, even that part still isn't crispy. Now my camera has IBIS but that being said it was shot at 1/60th and I feel like my old camera got sharper images.

Before going on: I crop most of my images to close to %100 for maximum zoom so if you are thinking "that's no so bad" try looking at the image in full.

Image 1

This one came out much better f4, 1/125, 52mm

Because the single petal was almost flat and I was all but broadsiding it I thought that f4 should be plenty to get it all in focus and the focus peaking (if memory serves) showed the top in focus too. It's not out of the field but the red zone is really what I would call "really in focus" the yellow is more "not out of focus".

Image 2

Image 3, 1/80 sec. f/5.6 75mm

Finally, in this image, you can see the bit I have circled in red, this is what I am looking for. Beautifully crisp even at %100 magnification. But I saw something else, the part of the rock off to the side that is in focus still looks very blurry in comparison to that petal. Does anyone know why? I would have LOVED to see the rest of the flower come in that clear, but I guess I didn't shoot at a high enough f stop, but I couldn't raise my iso any higher, it's at 1000 already and any higher gets grainy and is already starting in some of the blue circles. In fact normally when I shoot at 800 it looks worse than this so I am not sure how I got away with this. Except maybe looking at this article https://www.dpreview.com/articles/7450523388/sony-alpha-7r-ii-real-world-iso-invariance-study.

Image 3

Hopefuly some of you might be able to point out somethings to me about how to do a better job Thanks for any help!