GH5 Macro focusing Help

I have been rearing caterpillars that hatched from eggs I had from a moth I caught in my garden back in early July. The adults are emerging from pupae and I wanted to photograph them and take videos of them with my Panasonic GH5, but I am having a hard time getting the whole moth in focus, even at f/8-f/9 and its not a small moth and I am not very close up to it when taking the images.

I can't use focus stacking on video so that idea is out. Here an image of one of the moths (Coxcomb prominent) to show what I mean. I took this on a tripod using an Armen AL-M9 LED light I held above the moth:

Coxcomb Prominent Moth

As you can see, this mage I couldn't get the back end of the wing in focus as well as the head, it was either one or the other. I was using an Olympus 60mm Macro lens. Even moving further back, I wasn't able to get the whole moth in focus. I know that with macro you get a small DOF and need narrow apertures which. doesn't exactly help,

I still have quite a few pupa that haven't hatched yet, so I still have time to get more shots and videos when they do emerge, so would like to get it right next time.

My other options were to:

1.) Use my Olympus 12-40 which has a close focusing distance and focuses on a wider area than the 60mm macro lens, but suffers noticeable diffraction I have noticed past F/6.3. Also using a tripod, and haing the moth on a table, there is only so close I can get to the moth with the lens, and the lens wasn't long enough to get the moth close as I wanted.

2. Use my old full frame SIgma 105mm EX DG Macro and Metabones T Smart Adaptor (not the Speedbooser one). I'd have a long er focal length (210mm FF equivalent) and wouldn't have to get so close to the moth.

As I was using an Arman AL-M9 light handheld above the moth to take this as I don't yet have better lighting I can use, this limits the aperture I can use as the image starts getting darker and underexposed past f/8-9 at ISO 400. I don't want to go past that ISO for noise reasons (I will go to ISO 640 for video if necessary but only if I can expose to +1 stop)

Can anyone help? Would the Sigma lens work the same as the Olympus and get the same area in focus at the same aperture setting? Or would it work a little differently being a FF lens? I'd rather take more videos of these than photos so that will make a difference.

Using different lens will not help you. At the same magnification, you will have the same depth of field. There will probably be some slight differences, but you're not gonna get the whole thing in focus. If you don't want to stop down further, you just need to decrease magnification.

So for stills, you really need to do focus stacking.

For video, I'd say go to f/11 and experiment with going even further. Video is usually a bit more forgiving when it comes to diffraction.

tried my Sigma 105mm EX DG Macro and GH5 today with another moth that just hatched today and even at f/32, at really soft aperture, I couldn't get all the moth in focus, so increasing the DOF doesn't help here, but I did have all the moth in the frame. Here is one of the images:

I'll try focus stacking next time to see how that will do.

Makes me wonder if a wider angle Macro lens like the Venus Laowa 15mm f/4 1:1 macro might work better to get more in focus from left to right?

hindesite wrote:

Using a different lens WILL help you.

Try using a legacy macro lens but fitted to a cheap tilt adapter.

These are not expensive, and this is the kind of thing they are intended for. You should be able to align the plane of focus with the subject and get a better result, without any need for stacking but you may still have to stop down somewhat.

There's a demo of the new Canon lenses (very expensive) but also look on YouTube for other better demos. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/explora/photography/news/canon-releases-eos-m100-mirrorless-camera-85mm-f14-ts-e-lenses-new-flash

I've had good results using a $30 adapter.

I didn't think about about tilt shift for macro. I will check that out and may get a tilt adaptor in the future.

Looks like I still have a lot to learn here.