R7 First Shots with RF 100-500, close-up with butterflies

charlyw64 wrote:

Mike Engles wrote:

I have to agree. What really is worrying as so many images get a lot of praise, when no one actually looks hard enough, to justify the praise.

That's a problem, I was a member of a macro photography group and I dared to point out all these inevitable (it's physics, hey) problem areas but they followed the tradition that Horatio Nelson started when he took the telescope to his blind eye and facing the Spanish Armada exclaimed that he saw no enemy ships.

What an absolutely hilarious misfire of a reference! First, it was Drake who fought the Spanish Armada, more then 200 years before Nelson was said to have done the telescope to the blind eye thing. Nelson supposedly did it at the battle of Copenhagen, in 1801, against Danish and Norwegian ships during the Napoleonic wars. It wasn't ships he said he didn't see, but the signal from his commanding admiral to withdraw. And, as a result of doing the blind eye thing, he won the battle. By the way, Drake also defeated the Spanish Armada. So where are we? A guy who is complaining that others aren't paying attention to detail in looking at pictures gives an example with the details completely botched up. And, what is more, even if the details had been correct, the example would have proved the opposite of what he was trying to say. So you are saying that the others in your macro photography group were like Nelson (or maybe Drake), and you are heroically trying to prevent them from winning their famous victories?

At times 90% of the images in that macro forum were stacks, all ridiculously riddled with worse halos like the ones encountered here.

I have never done stacking and am unlikely to.

I unfortunately fell afoul of the fad - but I had been writing and technical correcting photography books as a part time side job at that time and thus I was also very critical regarding technical correctness of statements. When faced with the artifacts I started investigating what was happening and to my dismay can no longer turn off looking for problem areas in macro shots - when I recognize stacking problems I will regard that photographer as someone who isn't very critical and not to be trusted in their evaluation of gear. Because if these artifacts don't get recognized, what is he then doing criticizing gear where the differences are in the sub pixel level whereas the stacking artifacts may encompass huge subject areas.

What I have done is more than 35 years of macro photography and just know when something is not right, but cannot actually say what the problem is.

I am only 20 years into my macro photography journey and have lost maybe 10-15 images to the fad of trying stacking. I have sort of successfully stacked twice (because there are subjects where you don't run into the problems) but didn't find conical metal pins a subject to exploit for years to come...