RazorSharpWO wrote:
gardenersassistant wrote:
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.
Obsession ... which is good.
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.
I think being "completely fixed" on anything = lack of experience.
The more experienced one gets, the more open-minded they are to other techniques that might work better in a particular circumstance.
As much as I am "fixated" on stacking, in natural light, I realize that you can't stack moving objects. Therefore, there is value in perfecting techniques in achieving DOF through single exposures, which with macro means with flash.
When I first started shooting macro all I used was flash, and I had the proverbial "black backgrounds" because the flashing efforts were not diffused 😅
Absolutely. In fact I think preferences and tastes have validity independent of experience.
Not perfection. "Good enough for my purposes" has been my aim since I got in to close-up/macro.
Yep.
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.
So true is that last statement. That's also the case with stacks.
Sometimes I just don't feel like "correcting" every single glitch, blurred edge, etc. At some point it just has to be "good enough."
Other days, I may obsess for hours over cleaning-up one image, either because I liked it a lot, it was a rare subject, or I just had more energy that 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.)
All so true ...
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.
This is what prompted the immediately preceding two paragraphs.
Understood ...
and effective apertures of up to f/270.
😱
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.
Yes to all.
I think pushing the limits is great (as I tend do this with birds, shooting an 800mm lens, with a 2x TC ... @ 1600mm f/11 ... which often causes its own image problems, with not only diffraction, but my ISO levels also get bumped into the 10,000 to 25,600 range ...) precisely because it can teach you things that "staying the course" never will.
Essentially, I'm doing with birds what you're doing in macro, but it's enabled me to "fill the frame" from distances that no one could possibly achieve with a standard super-telephoto or zoom lens. I not only have to be particular with my glass, but also with what camera I use, because most cameras produce garbage over ISO 2500. I have to select a camera that can still render usable images from ISO 10,000 ISO 51,200. That said, I also have found "a sweet spot," between ISO 8000 and ISO 16,000, using either a 1.4x or 2x TC on my 800 lens, where I can achieve extreme sharpness, and retain excellent color detail — beyond which I also start to lose all of it:
@ ISO 8000
@ ISO 10,000
@ ISO 16,000
In all of these images, I was able to completely fill the frame — a difficult task with wild montane birds — which helps mitigate difficulties, when you have to crop, also, in addition to the existing challenges of aperture and ISO.
Bringing this back to macro, I can definitely see that it would be handier just to take one image, which achieves acceptable sharpness, good DOF, while not losing "too" much color in the process ... over the laborious process of stacking. Especially live subjects.
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?
True, that is the whole point and fascination.
Ignorance. I didn't know enough to know that it wouldn't work.
Maybe so, but I think the better road is to do what you're doing, and what I am doing, and see for yourself, anyway.
It is absolutely instructive to learn "all the reasons why" first-hand ... and you may also discover many of the standard prejudices are wrong. Also, harkening back to the beginning, your own preferences are different from others. My own preferences are different from others.
Reading articles written by other people is good, but finding out for yourself is even better 👍
Also, as you rightly-mentioned above, the degree to time/effort you might put in to make it perfect (compared to someone else) will also thereby yield different results.
Your own results on one day may also exceed yourself in the next.
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.
That is an honest and important truth.
How big (or small) you will make your images determines how much latitude you can give yourself in pushing those limits.
I enjoy them too! It's just that I don't produce them for myself, so I enjoy other people's.
Yes again.
I appreciate street photography also ... as an example ... even though I have never participated in the genre. I simply "get" what they're trying to do, and enjoy many of the images, but I am too ensconced in wildlife photography to add another genre to my palate.
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.
This is also true.
Stacking wide-open (or barely-stopped-down to the optimal, say, f/4 aperture) is the best way to achieve optimal image quality. Yet we are limited to "what subject matter" we can focus on. (Pardon the pun.)
This is why my own subjects tend to be crab spiders, or other "camouflaged" subjects, that tend to sit still long enough to allow me a decent stack, wide-open.
Sometimes I will compromise, and maybe do a mini-stack @ f/8 ...
But when I am trying to photograph a jumping spider, or other ever-moving subject, I deploy a diffused flash same as the next guy 😄
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).
All very true!
Beautiful images. Very interesting to learn about your technique.
In terms of attitude and approach I think we are on the same page, or a different page of the same book perhaps.
Thank you so much for taking the time to provide such a thorough and considered response. I very much appreciate that.
