If any of my comments below come across as annoying pedantry or logic chopping, please ignore them. Some of this stuff is a bit of a hobby horse for me.
RazorSharpWO wrote:
One could literally write a book on all of the nuances. At the end of the day, preferences & tastes have to be acquired,i.e., gained through experience.
I think they can be acquired through experience; that is certainly the case for me. In fact my tastes aren't a settled thing, but keep changing over time. However, I have the impression that some people have a very clear and seemingly fixed view of what they want to achieve, even when starting out in some new and unfamiliar field such as close-up/macro, and may stick with that view for a long time.
And two equally-experienced people can have different preferences & tastes, both having merit.
Absolutely. In fact I think preferences and tastes have validity independent of experience.
As a side note, we've talked in the past before, although I was using a different handle. Our views and styles conflicted – I sought perfection stacking, wide-open – while you sought perfection
Not perfection. "Good enough for my purposes" has been my aim since I got in to close-up/macro.
with "one-shot" stopped way down ... beyond anything I would ever consider.
Some of your images posted recently, confirmed my prejudices (namely that the diffraction can muddle the color/contrast).
I would be surprised if it didn't, but one of the issues with using particular of my posted images on which to base such views is that the look of my images, including the colour and contrast, depends on what processing I used. The processing depends on the products and workflow I used, the amount of attention/care I paid to what I was doing and my tastes on the day. The products and workflow tend to vary over a timescale of weeks and months, with changes in key batch parameters sometimes happening during a period of stable product set and processing sequence. My care/attention can vary from session to session and also sometimes from image to image in a session. My tastes can vary from one session to the next, and also from one processing of an image to another (I go back to the originals and reprocess some of my images from time to time. And sometimes I prefer an earlier version.)
So, depending on which images one happens to be considering, there may be a random element to my outputs sufficient to confuse the issues regarding the impact on image characteristics of the techniques I use, including the apertures that I use.
However, in reading your meticulous work in your blog posts, with both interest and respect, in this segment in particular,
This is what prompted the immediately preceding two paragraphs.
the colors and details you were able to achieve were astounding. Literally I had to pick my jaw up off the floor, esp. when considering you're shooting @ f/45 - f/57.
and effective apertures of up to f/270.
Honestly, I still can't even wrap my head around this ... my own prejudicesb:)
I suspect a certain degree of cognitive dissonance isn't uncommon. It took me over a decade to get to grips with it. Eight years ago I started what turned into a 7 year long pinned thread at TalkPhotography.co.uk in which I went into excruciating detail (not recommended reading!) about my struggles to understand what was going on and my attempts to handle it, including blind alleys and erroneous assumptions and conclusions.
After all, it is common knowledge that:
- diffraction destroys detail,
- the smaller the aperture the worse the problem,
- most lenses are at their best within a stop or two of their maximum aperture, or even at their maximum aperture for some exceptionally good lenses
- by f/22 diffraction softening is massive, you can see the huge drop-off on graphs in reviews etc and it is easy to see in like for like image comparisons.
Add to that a view that the whole purpose of macro is to capture the wondrous fine details that nature creates and that you can't see with the naked eye, then why on earth would anyone even consider using the apertures I do? Why did I bother?
Ignorance. I didn't know enough to know that it wouldn't work.
Yet I have to actually concede your point as well as applaud your work and perseverance. Perfecting the ability to nail arthropods, with DOF like this, at those apertures, and working software to the extent you can correct the effects of diffraction
I don't think you can correct it, or not much compared to the big losses I'm getting. The best I can do is mitigate/hide/distract attention away from the losses, by keeping the outputs small, processing the images for best viewing at that small size and telling people not to bother trying to zoom in, and trying to use composition and illumination so as to make the images as appealing to the (my) eye as I can.
and achieve color and clarity like this, is truly admirable.
That doesn't mean I still don't enjoy bokeh, and perspectives that are "razor-sharp, wide-open" ...
I enjoy them too! It's just that I don't produce them for myself, so I enjoy other people's.
it just means I want to learn and appreciate how to profit from your work and dedication, because it's more practical than stacking, especially live in the field.
True, but having said that there are people producing great stacks from live subjects that aren't moving much, including in some cases live in the field. I can't match that with what I do. But they can't use those methods for subjects like the ones I photograph as they are moving around, and even if they are not moving around, doing stacking live in the field for small subjects a millimetre or two long like some springtails, mites and tics must be extremely taxing (but I have seen it done occasionally by some very skilled people).
